The Aftermath
by Franki09
Summary: Freedom was everything Chell thought it would be, and she wouldn't give it up for the world, but when disaster strikes and she is forced to go back to the one place she's tried so hard to forget, will some good come out of it? TEMPORARILY DISCONTINUED. WILL BE FINISHED AT SOME POINT.
1. Chapter 1

_Freedom. _The word swam dreamily through her head, pounding in her ears and running through her veins, making her feel, for _once, _carefree. _Freedom. _No worries. No homicidal, murderous AI computers hanging over her head making death threats and calling her a lunatic. No need to be careful on every step, with the knowledge that just one wrong move would end her life crushing down on her shoulders. For the first time she could remember, she was _free._

Free. FREEEE! Oh, what a great feeling that was! It was like- it was like... Never mind, she was finally free! It was like that first breath of air after being submerged in water a long time, but imagine that amount of time times a thousand, and that's what it felt like. Such a marvellous, wondrous, _amazing _feeling that she would of yelled it out loud to the world had she remembered how to use her own voice. Contrary to GLaDOS's belief, Chell was not, in fact, a mute. She had known it from the very first time GLaDOS had first spoken to her, when she had woken up in a strange glass box wearing a strange orange jumpsuit surrounded by strange, plain furniture. She had just decided not to respond, thinking at first it was just a synthesized voice that everybody else heard when in the same predicament as herself.

Unfortunately, after a while she realised that it was genuinely GLaDOS speaking and that she could respond if she had wanted to, but her voice had become so underused she decided it would be better to leave GLaDOS thinking she had always been a mute. But GLaDOS wasn't there anymore; Chell was free. Free to speak. Free to do whatever the hell she wanted do. Completely and utterly free, away from that retched place, welcomed back into the world where not everything was artificial, and into the sunlight for what Chell remembered as her first time. After all, Chell had no memories before she had woken up so long ago, and didn't really care much for them either. She might decide she doesn't want her memories once in possession of them, and was ready to start afresh. And what was better than your first breath of clean, non-recycled air?

Nothing. That's what. Apart from maybe a freshly baked chocolate cake after blowing up your arch-nemesis. But other than that, no-one, _no-one _would be able to even consider believing how _fantastic _it felt to feel fresh air run into your lungs. To see the wind lazily whispering through the trees, and the sunset dancing playfully on the tips of the wheat in the horizon. Just to see things move naturally, without being controlled and told to move by a corrupted AI.

The sunlight was warm on her face, streaming down her nerves and causing excitement to bubble up inside her. It was strange; like bathing in an ethereal light. The only warmth and light she recalled ever experiencing were from the solid glares of the electric lights or the steady, mild heating of the Enrichment Centre. Sunlight was so, so different. So much more natural.

Chell closed her eyes and felt peace for the first time in a long time. She hugged herself tightly, wallowing in the gentle feel of the breeze stroking her bare arms. She smiled, and let a small laugh escape her lips. It was quiet and hoarse due to her lack of voice, but it was a laugh, a sound, and was there nevertheless. And this time she actually had a reason to be laughing for.

Then she ran. She ran away from the falling debris surrounding the lift that went back down into Aperture, away from testing and cake and portals and power-crazed computers, into the life she had only dreamed of living. She let the wheat stalks caress her skin, enjoying the feeling of organic life at her fingertips. Chell was laughing all the way. It felt great.

Of course, it felt as if she had been running for hours, but after hearing a _whiiiizzz! _quickly followed by a _thud _she opened her eyes to find that she had been running in mere loops still in sight of the old, worn-out shack that was the Aperture lift, so out of place in the wheat field. She cautiously began walking back towards the source of the noise, which ironically was in the direction of the lift. When she appeared in the clearing out from the edge of the wheat field, she was greeted by the ever-welcoming sight of the Companion Cube. _Her _Companion Cube.

Her heart leapt in her chest – she was so happy to see it! The little pink hearts on it's sides were like music to her eyes. Wait – that doesn't even make sense. Oh well, she had her Companion Cube! Chell ran towards it, wrapping her arms around it's bulky frame and pressing her cheek against it's metallic side. She sighed peacefully against it. "Thank you, GLaDOS," she murmured, surprising herself at the sound of her own voice. It appeared that the computer had had some generosity in her after all; she had the decency to shoot Chell's Companion Cube back up the lift. After being turned into a potato and having to work alongside Chell in order to overthrow Wheatley, Chell guessed GLaDOS now held a shred of respect for her.

Letting out another contented sigh, she lifted the companion cube in her arms and began slowly trekking away again. She had now gotten over the thrill of being outside again and had decided to start acting serious about her situation. She was in the middle of nowhere for all she knew, and had no means of finding where the nearest civilisation was, if it even existed, or a way to get there if it did. She didn't even know what year it was! After calming the surging excitement of being free, all the horrible memories of the experiences she had had in that awful place began to resurface. The sun was going down now, and Chell still had not found civilisation. She sat down on her Companion Cube, exhausted, and began to think.

She pulled her jumpsuit sleeves up over her shoulders and zipped it up, shivering. She needed to find shelter soon, and her arms and legs ached from walking all this way carrying a heavy cube as well. After regaining her breath, Chell started inspecting the burns on her arms. They were dark and ragged and foreign compared to the rest of her smooth, tan complexion. She sighed heavily, brushing her dark fringe away from her face. Looking up at the starry night sky, she stared hopelessly into the eternal, over-whelming beauty of it and wondered how the blackness never seemed to cease.

She wondered if Wheatley was up there somewhere, drifting aimlessly around in space. Part of her felt pity for him, a very small part, because no-one should deserve to spend a lifetime up in that endless emptiness with no means of getting down until the day their battery runs out. But another part of her, the bigger part, felt gleeful in the thought that the little this-word-shall-not-be-recorded-here finally got what he deserved. Chell scowled. That traitor.

He had been corrupted with power, driven crazy by GLaDOS's body. He had broken the friendship with the only human, no, scrap that, the only _person _to treat him with respect, as an equal. And now he had none. Chell smirked to herself at the thought of him floating around endlessly in space with only Space Core as company. She thought back to when she had been happy, glad to have sane company who, granted, was a little annoying at times, was not only was good to be around was trying to help her escape as well. When he so brutally betrayed her, she had to ally with _GLaDOS, _and it left her distraught, hurt and empty.

Now Chell wanted nothing more than to see her get her revenge, which was what she had got. Sure, she knew that it wasn't entirely Wheatley's fault, as the computer mainframe had broken, and was programmed to corrupt any cores plugged into it. But she was still human, and she knew she could never forgive him for what he had done. Well, if she tried, it would be _very _hard.

After a bit, the cold started to get to her. She wasn't used to it, and it chilled her to the bone. Chell decided she would have to get up and find shelter and rest for the night, if not civilisation, so she would continue her search in the morning. Because a wheat field had to be near a town, else there would be no point for it, and it had to end _somewhere. _But for now, shelter was her first priority.

Heaving a sigh, she picked herself up and hauled the Companion Cube into her arms. Night had fully settled now, and the darkness was new to Chell. Although in her more recent adventures with Wheatley, Aperture had become dark and shadowy, Chell was still used to an endless amount of artificial light, and the ultimate blackness of the outside world at night was slightly overwhelming.

Eventually, her legs began to ache. It wasn't exhausting or tiring, as Chell had become quite fit from all the running in the Enrichment Centre. Memories of the suffering she had got from that place formed in her mind. She knew that they would be plaguing her dreams for a couple of years to come.

Her situation was beginning to look hopeless. It was night, and the exhilaration from being free had died down now she could no longer see the sun, or hear the chirruping of birds, and the breeze she felt was now harsh and chill. The only sound to comfort her was the low hum of crickets. Fireflies danced merrily, a sole source of light against the shadows. She couldn't help a smile in spite of herself.

Chell decided that she was already tired enough, so the pain in her legs couldn't get any worse, she needed to find a place to rest soon, and it would help keep her warm, so she began to run. Her arm muscles protested from the heavy weight of the Companion Cube, but she kept going, allowing the stalks to slap painfully against the bare skin of her arms. All the running began to warm up her body again, though, so at least that was good.

She blinked away a single tear from her eye, and whimpered as she ran. She wasn't sure why the tear had come, but from all the emotions she had experienced in the last few days, (or any amount of time really; it was hard to tell underground,) she knew it wouldn't be able to stay caged up for much longer.

Her leg muscles now burned and sweat began to trickle down her forehead from the extra weight of the Companion Cube. Chell was mere seconds away from collapsing, trembling, to her knees when all of a sudden she burst out into the open from the edge of the wheat field. Her eyes widened in a temporary surprise at the sudden change in surrounding, but before she could register it fully they snapped shut, the Companion Cube fell from her arms, and she plopped down to the floor, regaining her breath.

When she had finally stolen her breath back, she pulled herself up from her knees and blinked a few times, grasping her surroundings. She was in a small clearing; there was hardly enough room even for the old, abandoned barn-house that was looming condescendingly over Chell. It's old, empty windows stared bleakly from their stops, like sad, hollow eyes. The wind whistled through it in very much the same way water trickles down one's throat. Flaking red paint was peeling on the walls.

Hope sparked like a flame deep inside of Chell – she had found shelter. Not quite the place she was looking for, but it would last the night and would keep her alive long enough for her to find proper civilisation. If the barn was here, a town couldn't be too far.

Filled to the brim with new energy powered by relief, Chell immediately started searching for tinder, or anything that would be good to light a fire, anyway. As she was surrounded by a wheat field, that was the easiest option, and after retrieving a good amount of wheat and carrying it inside, she was granted further happiness upon the sight of old planks of wood lying around the barn. There was a large pile of hay in one corner that looked comfy enough to sleep on, and with some loose stones she had found outside she would stop the fire from spreading.

Fuelled by the idea of potential rest, Chell set to work at setting the wheat with some added hay down on the dusty floor in what she hoped was the best position for starting a fire. Once it had got going, she added the wooden planks and was soon watching with joy as the welcoming, orange flames lashed their fiery tongues against the blackness, painting the floor with dancing shadows. It emanated warmth, and Chell shortly found herself perched on the Companion Cube at the edge of the haystack that would serve as her rest for the night, and held up her chilly hands for the strength of her makeshift fire to aid.

The heat coursed through her veins, streaming down her body and sending life back into her fingers and toes. When satisfied with her current circumstance, Chell's eyes began to droop from the serenity and peacefulness of it all. The warmth of the flames was so calming, that she slowly trudged to the haystack, arranging it around her to make a comfy bed shape, before resting her head against her hands thinking about the day's events. The safety of the fire and the familiarity of her Companion Cube lulled her off to sleep, with a happy dream of freedom, even though deep down, Chell knew the following nights would be nightmares of her experiences in the Enrichment Centre haunting her sleep.

{O}

GLaDOS blinked her optic in boredom as once again, Blue and Orange had failed to successfully complete a test. The past few months had especially tedious without her only human test subject to mock and torture, and the days began to become a blur as GLaDOS repeated the same routine day in day out, with no need to sleep or do anything but test. The Enrichment centre had been mostly restored to as it once had been, and GLaDOS was no longer... well, _insane. _She was still mean, sarcastic, sadistic, but murderous? Unless it was that moron, Wheatley, GLaDOS no longer had the desire to beat every living thing to a pulp.

She was beginning to miss Chell. As much as she hated to admit it, during the time when she had been a potato she realised how harsh she had been to the one person who wasn't actually a lunatic, or fat, or even a murderer, because now GLaDOS understood that Chell's actions were completely just. She knew this because she wanted to do the exact same thing to Wheatley. Honestly, how _dare _he turn GLaDOS into a potato!

So although she was still cold, harsh and ever so _slightly _overpowering, she had now developed 'feelings' and actually felt somewhat bad for all the things she had done to Chell, and missed having a human to perform her tests rather than just two robots who could _never_ die. Where was the excitement in that?

She also felt a very, very, _very _angry feeling towards Wheatley. Not only for putting her in a potato, but for threatening her favourite test subject as well! Still, there was another, much smaller, feeling that snagged at the corners of her artificial mind. It was pity, for the poor moron who had been condemned to space until his battery died, which would be another few decades yet, because although she persuaded herself that he _did _deserve what he got, it was also partly the fact that her body had been previously corrupted by herself.

Yet even so, she pushed these 'feelings' to the back of her database, so she could concentrate on the more important things, like testing. She felt like she was damned to an eternity with ATLAS and P-Body, who couldn't even give intelligent conversation. How GLaDOS longed for someone to talk to. Yes, Chell couldn't actually give conversation either, but it was better than those two idiots.

GLaDOS would even be willing to retrieve the moron from space if she knew how, because she knew that after a couple of years of name-calling and exploding and then reassembling, she could find it in her to forgive him. As much as she hated him with all her non-existent gut, anybody she could have with her to spend eternity with would be fine, so long as nothing out of the ordinary happened. Sure, it would be interesting, but whatever the consequences would be would probably be too dire to think about.

She decided to work out some formulas to keep her occupied. It was easy, and she had done them so many times before in the six-month period since Chell left, but it kept her mind occupied and that was fine with her. Of course, she hadn't been completely uncreative, as she had been working on some more complex android bodies for ATLAS and P-Body, and they were nearly done. Maybe then she would actually be able to say something and have someone _respond. _That would be nice.

Fortunately, GLaDOS's wishes were granted. She was interrupted from her thoughts when there was a loud _crash!_ and she saw on the video feed ATLAS scattered over the floor of the test chamber, disembodied and broken. P-Body was running around frantically, waving her arms above her head and crashing into walls. GLaDOS sighed into the announcement speaker.

"Well done. You have failed me... _again_," she said in a bored, monotone voice. "If you want to start testing again, I suggest you head over to the Repair chamber." When seeing that neither of them moved, she said, "Oh. You can't move, because you are broken. Orange, take Blue to the Repair chamber. And I would hurry, because if you don't, I will blow you _both _up."

P-Body jumped on the screen, obviously panicking. GLaDOS watched in a half-amusement as she attempted to gather ATLAS's parts, before hurriedly completing the test as best she could by herself and hurried out of the exit, ATLAS still broken in her robotic arms.

GLaDOS sighed again at their incompetence to do anything right. She desperately needed something different to happen, or she would probably shut down from lack of malfunctioning. The past few months without Chell had seemed to stretch on forever, and GLaDOS was sure the boredom would kill her one day. She decided to check the Update screen to see if there was anything she needed to sort out, just to keep her busy, even though she knew that there wouldn't be any. The last update she had received was five months ago when it was alerting her that one of the toilets the scientists used to use was blocked.

GLaDOS had not been happy, and had dropped a Weighted Storage Cube on the toilet for good measure. But, to her surprise, there was an update on the screen. This was the part where one of her wishes came true.

In beeping red letters on the screen was the sign, **APERTURE PRODUCT FOUND 187.50321 MILES AWAY. ACTION RECOMMENDED. **Now this was new. GLaDOS swivelled round on her cables to face the screen fully. Delving into the matter further, she discovered that an Aperture product had randomly popped up on the Earth's surface in, leaving no trace as to how it got there. GLaDOS, being clever enough it couldn't have just appeared from thin air, knew what the object was and didn't want to admit it.

After seeing more details on it, another sign popped up. **ACTION REQUIRED. APERTURE PRODUCT COULD GENERATE POSSIBLE HAZARDS. DESTROYING RECOMMENDED. BLOW UP OBJECT? **GLaDOS groaned internally. No, she didn't want to blow it up! Because she knew that the object was probably the moron. Or Space Core, but it was more likely Wheatley. She knew she couldn't leave it there, but she didn't want the traitor in her sight again. Then again, she couldn't blow him up either, as she might be destroying her only chance of conversation.

So she decided to take action. She couldn't do anything, no, but ATLAS and P-Body could. It was a good job she had the near-complete android bodies available. Switching the camera feed to the Repair chamber, she watched impatiently as P-Body posted ATLAS's parts through the Reassembling machine and as he came out a few minutes later, fully repaired. P-Body jumped in delight and ran towards her partner, wrapping him in a tight hug and shutting her optic. "Careful. You don't want to _destroy_ him again, _do you_?" GLaDOS said.

The robots pulled apart, and looked back up at the camera, awaiting further instructions. "Get to the Central AI Chamber. _Now_. There's a job I need you to perform. And this time, there can _be_ no failures," she growled. They squirmed on screen before racing to the door, tripping over each other. It was a while before they arrived, and by then GLaDOS's patience was wearing thin. She had summoned the android bodies forward and plugged them into the Core Transfer Receptacle, having done a few last-minute tweaks to get them as close to complete as she could.

The round Aperture automatic door opened with a z_ip _and ATLAS and P-Body ran in, rushing hurriedly. GLaDOS said nothing, but watched as they looked up at her, and her unnerving silence, to the Core Transfer Receptacle. Realisation set in. Their optics widened visibly and they both charged towards the door, hurrying to get out as fast as possible. They were met with the unpleasant sound of the door snapping shut and turned, trembling, to face GLaDOS and the evil Core Transfer Receptacle.

"Get in there," GLaDOS barked. "_Now._"

They winced, and miserably trudged to the Core Transfer Receptacle in the centre of the chamber. Plugging themselves in with a sigh, they looked forlornly at the bodies they would be transferred to. As GLaDOS missed human company the most, she had done her best to make the android bodies as human-looking on the outside as possible, and had succeeded. The bodies could talk, but could not eat or sleep or breathe, as they did not need to. The skin on the outside was soft, but underneath that were layers and layers of metal panelling and beneath that, the wiring and inner circuits.

Artificial hair had been sewn into the top of their heads; P-Body a reddish-gingery colour and ATLAS had a very light, platinum blond. Their skin was a pale white. As GLaDOS did not have the ability to create anything but perfect creations, let alone humans, their facial features were perfectly formed and plain. They had a well-curved chin and high cheekbones, and in P-Body's case, full, elegant lips. P-Body's body was also more feminine than ATLAS, giving them the appearance of male and female. At the moment, the android's eyes were closed and blank.

"You have a job to do." GLaDOS informed them. "I will explain the full details after the transfer, but you will require these bodies to perform it. Transfer undergoing. Be prepared for pain. A _lot _of pain. In fact, the most horrible, torturous pain you will ever experience in your pitiful lives. But it will only hurt a little bit."

Then she switched the transfer on, and it started. Had ATLAS and P-Body had the ability to speak, they would have let out blood-curdling screams, but the most they could do was twitch and fizz and widen their optics as electrical sparks jumped out from their old bodies as their cores were placed into the androids. The lack of screams made it a lot easier for GLaDOS to watch, as often she did not like witnessing the pain cores experienced from that blasted Core Transfer.

Eventually, to ATLAS and P-Body's relief, the transfer was complete. They opened their new eyes and peered around at the room, getting adjusted to the new bodies' cameras and mainframes. These eyes were smaller, and the view was different, but at least there were two eyes. And now they had mouths! They were both looking forward to testing out the ability to speak later on. These new bodies were also easier to use; their movements were so much smoother and easy-going. To anybody else, they would have looked like ordinary humans. But to the above-average in intelligence, they would have noticed a slight jerk in their movements, and the slight brightness of the eyes, and maybe even the faint whirr that emanated from them if you listen carefully. But GLaDOS knew that despite ATLAS and P-Body's stupidity, they were clever enough to stay clear of humans as much as possible.

After rolling their robotic tongues around their mouths a bit and stretching their new arms, ATLAS and P-Body stood to attention in front of GLaDOS's optic, twitching every now and again as they got comfortable in their new bodies. When they had settled, GLaDOS spoke. "Well done. You managed to complete the transfer without self-destructing in pain. I hope you enjoyed it. Also, I think you will be happy to hear that I lied when I said it would be the most horrible, torturous pain you will ever have to experience. You will have to do it again when you complete your mission to go back into your old bodies for me to finish these, and then again when I have finished them. Isn't that funny? You actually thought you wouldn't have to experience that amount of pain again. You did. I could see it in your faces that I so cleverly crafted. Well, I can now tell you, you will experience that horrible, torturous pain again. Ha ha."

ATLAS and P-Body's shoulders visibly drooped. "Anyway. The babbling moron from space has returned, and it's your job to collect him. He landed in the centre of Utah. Take this map I constructed to take you there," a robot arm dropped a piece of paper in front of them. A very, very complicated looking piece of paper, so much in fact that when they inspected it closer they could not decipher it all, but decided not to tell GLaDOS. She just continued, regardless. "As these bodies are more complex than your old ones, they can only stand up to 100˚celsius and only have enough charge to last six months. Don't go near water, don't overheat, and _don't fail me. _If anyone asks, you are siblings by the names of Piper and Alex. _Don't _tell anyone where you come from, and at least try to act human. You need to bring the moron back to me unharmed within six months or I will blow you up, and this time I will _not _bring you back. Understand?"

ATLAS and P-Body nodded frantically. "Unfortunately, you cannot take your Handheld Portal Device with you. Take this," an arm dropped a bundle of dollar notes GLaDOS had printed, "and be as quick as possible. Now leave."

An Aperture lift leading up to the outside world dropped from the ceiling and fell into place on the floor with a hiss. With a brief hesitation, ATLAS and P-Body gathered their strength and ventured into the lift, looking far braver and dramatic than necessary. GLaDOS rolled her optic and sighed as her only remaining test subjects disappeared from view into the world, leaving her completely and utterly alone for the first time in a _long _time. She was almost looking forward to seeing the moron again.

Almost.

{O}

"SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!" Space Core cried, for the trillionth time, blinking it's optic in glee and wriggling excitedly in it's orbit. "We're in space, we're in space, we're in spacey, spacey space... WE'RE IN _SPAAAAAAAAACE!"_

Wheatley sighed; he would have attempted to shut him up, but he had lost count of how many times he had tried that and all of them had been fruitless and had helped him come to the conclusion that no matter how many times he tried to keep Space Core quiet, there was no stopping him. Wheatley couldn't quite get his 'head' round the fact there literally was no going back. He was to be stuck up here with only a bumbling idiot, who couldn't get over being in space, until his battery died and he would become another piece of man-made junk floating around in space.

It was almost physically painful to think about why Wheatley was up here in the first place. He had done so many terrible, terrible things to the only person who treated him with respect, and it wasn't even him thinking. It was the computer mainframe he was plugged into, corrupting his thoughts and coaxing him with power and vengeance against someone who had never actually done anything and someone who had called him a moron regularly, but other than that had done nothing against him.

Still, he knew it was added to the fact he was also incredibly fed up with being insulted and mistreated, but he had never minded much before he had been given the power to _do _something about it, to actually get his revenge on something he didn't even need revenge on. He had been driven power-crazy, and it had caused him to _want _to kill and torture his best friend, his _only _friend. But she wasn't his friend anymore, and never would be again, would never want to be again. That hurt Wheatley more than he could put down in words. Whoever designed robots with feelings this... well, _human, _must have been one horrible little fellow.

Looking back at his actions now, he was disgusted at them. It was almost hard to believe he had been the one to do those awful things, that it was all _him. _It was gut-wrenching even though Wheatley had no gut to think that he was even capable of such things. And he hated the fact he would never be able to apologise. That was his last wish, and it would never happen. Never. Ever. Nope, not gonna happen.

He would be stuck up in space for the rest of his days while down on earth, Chell would be going on about her daily life, trying to forget the traumatizing experiences _he _had caused, thinking that he was a murderous traitor. She would live out her whole life never being able to know that he was sorry, never knowing how desperately he wanted to make amends for the wrong he had committed. It was such a horrible thought Wheatley wished his battery would die soon. He no longer had any point to living, as Space Core was too entranced by space he wouldn't miss his company much.

Great. No-one alive actually liked him. Maybe self-destructing would do the trick, if he actually knew how. But maybe he should carry out his punishment like he deserved – to stay stuck in an endless space until the day his battery died, which, as his settings had informed him, would be another 14,429 days. He had only been in space 181 days.

If only he could say he was sorry. Then at least he could shut down happy, with the knowledge that he was forgiven, and that Chell knew he was sorry for so ruthlessly ripping their friendship in half as easily as ripping a sheet of paper. Wheatley wondered if she remembered him, or if she thought of him often. If she did, it was probably evil, tearing-Wheatley-apart thoughts anyway. So no hopes there.

Wheatley was interrupted from his thoughts as Space Core said something slightly different to his usual space-fascination spouting. "Do you like space?" it asked curiously. Wheatley rolled over in space to face the little core. "What?" he managed, his voice modulator crackling like on old radio from lack of use. "Do you like space?" it repeated. "I do. I LOVE it! It's big and black and endless and big!"

"I-uh, think you may have said 'big' twice, there, mate."

"Big! Space is big! Space is big and black and endless. That means it goes on-" it paused dramatically, "forever!"

"I think you, _ah_, may have something broken," Wheatley said, although he knew that Space had nothing broken; he was like this normally. He was just curious as to why scientists could be stupid enough to create such an annoying core in the first place.

"Why are you not happy? I'm happy. I'm in SPACE! Why are you not happy if you're in space?"

"Well, I don't think everyone likes space as much as you do. Yes, that's it. Not everybody likes space."  
>Space Core looked confused. "How can people not like space?" it asked.<p>

Wheatley decided not to answer. It wouldn't do much anyway. So he 'sat' and drifted off into his thoughts, the incessant rambling of Space Core sounding distant in his Sound Modulator.

Once again, he was awoken when Space Core probably said the most unlikely thing Wheatley ever expected it to say. "I'm bored of space," it said. Wheatley spun round and stared at Space Core in shock.

"You're what?" he snapped.

"I'm bored of space. Nothing interesting ever happens."

"You weren't saying that a minute ago."

"Space isn't everything I thought it would be."

"Took you six months to work that out."

"It's just big and black and endless."

"Yes, yes it is."

"I wanna go home."

Wheatley paused. "So do I, mate. So do I," he said forlornly after a brief moment's hesitation.

Space Core sighed and stared around blankly. "I miss Earth."

"Yeah. Earth was good."

Frankly, Wheatley was at a loss as to how the little Space Core had managed to grow bored of something it was programmed to be infatuated with. But Wheatley decided not to think about it too much. He had other things to think about, even though it was all he had been thinking about since the very first day he was confined to the wretched area called space.

What Wheatley didn't know, was that he was about to get what he wanted anyway. He had trailed off into his own thoughts again, and was so rudely jerked out of them, when something _else _unexpected happened. There was a loud squeal from behind him, and he wasn't sure if it was delighted or terrified. He desperately hoped it was the former. "What's wrong? Are we going to die? Oh, please tell me it's something life-threatening!"

"I don't wanna go back to Earth anymore!" Space Core said happily. "Space just became interesting again!"

If Wheatley had hands and Space Core had shoulders, Wheatley would have shook them violently as he looked into Space Core's optic and demanded, "What? Just tell me, what. Is. Interesting?"

If Space Core had a mouth and hands, it would have smiled gleefully and pointed at somewhere next to Wheatley as it giggled, "Meteorite!" as if it were pointing out a bunny.

Wheatley swivelled round on his axis and his optic widened at the sight of a big, fiery rock shooting at the speed of light straight towards them. Half of him was immensely happy - he was most likely going to die when it hit and he wouldn't be stuck with horrible guilt anymore. But the other part was terrified – he wasn't ready for this. He had wished for it earlier but he needed to be prepared first!

So he braced himself for impact. He would get whatever was coming for him, no matter the consequences. At least there was a large possibility that this was all going to end soon.

However, it didn't end quite as Wheatley had expected it to. The meteorite was getting closer, he could hear it now. When he could swear it was milliseconds from impact though, he didn't get squashed like he thought he would. Instead, there was a horrible feeling of adrenaline in his circuits which made him wonder for a split second why scientists even gave cores the ability to feel adrenaline, but the thought was quickly blown away when there a was an ear-splitting _whoosh! _and an intense heat began to squeeze through the cracks in Wheatley's panelling. He had to completely shut his optic to stop it from falling out from the speed.

After a long time of this horrible feeling, Wheatley had managed to piece together what was happening. The meteorite had missed him by millimetres and he had been whisked into it's path from the speed and was now currently flying to wherever the meteorite was headed alongside it. There was probably little to none chance of him escaping the grasp of this thing unless it hit some unfortunate planet, and Wheatley guessed Space Core wasn't with the meteorite with him.

Oh well. The poor fellow was probably content with staying up in space now it had regained it's interest, at least for another 181 days. Maybe if it was lucky, another meteorite would fly past. Wheatley would have felt sorry for it, but he was more concerned for his own well-being to worry about that.

All of a sudden, there was a ghastly calmness and the meteorite seemed to slow down with a jolt. A brief moment of an atrocious heat a hundred times worse than the last one shot through but only lasted a nanosecond before it felt like Wheatley was flying.

Eventually, he summoned the bravery to open his optic a crack, just to see what had happened, and was met with what he wasn't sure was a pleasant or unpleasant surprise.

What looked unbelievably closer than usual was a getting-larger-by-the-second planet that was big, blue, watery and familiar from the images on his database.

Part of him wanted to yell out with happiness.

The other part wanted to tremble in fear at the sight of water.

Apparently water covered two thirds of the planet's surface.

Wheatley did not like water.

**A/N. I'm quite happy with this chapter. There may be many mistakes as it's been a while since I've played the game, but please tell me and I shall try to sort them. Please review, I'm dying to know what you think! Tell me if you think I should continue or not. Thanks! :)**

**~Franki**


	2. Chapter 2

Chell stumbled slightly as she tripped on the stairs for the eighth time, her foot slipping as there was that horrible moment when your foot falls through the air. It made her head swim even more and the growing ache in her chest multiply by a thousand as she coughed again, clutching the stair-rail with one pale, sickly hand and covering her mouth with the other. Her shoulders shuddered, racking with great heaves as she drew breath, preparing for another coughing fit.

Her lungs felt as if ants were crawling all over them and her throat as if someone had rubbed sandpaper against it. Beads of sweat poured from her clammy forehead from the mere effort of breathing. It felt like nothing Chell had ever experienced before, and that was saying something.

To her relief, she had nearly reached the bottom of the stairs, but it had been incredibly exhausting and she felt as if she could collapse any second. Taking a strangled breath, she used the last of her energy to haul herself to her tiny kitchen, leaning heavily on the walls. Her head was pounding and her insides felt like ice. Chell dragged herself to the sink, fumbling around the cupboard for a glass and thrusting it under the tap, clumsily turning it and only relaxing after she could see the water trickling lazily into her cup.

After it was half-full, she could wait no longer and shoved the glass to her lips, downing it in one gulp and spilling water droplets everywhere. As the water streamed down her gullet, her head cleared slightly and her hands stopped shaking too badly, but she still felt like trash. She sighed as she placed the empty glass back on the counter, wiped her mouth with her dressing gown sleeve and leaned against the worktop while she regained the will to go back upstairs to rest. She felt too tired to do even that.

_Oh, God help me, _Chell thought. She knew why she felt like this. She wasn't ill, no, but that's what she had tried to persuade the doctor and herself, as she definitely didn't want to admit it. She could live a bit longer hiding under the pretence that it was just an illness that would pass. It wasn't a cold or a cough, but it wasn't side-effects of smoking either, like the doctor had thought. No, this was something entirely different. Something life-threatening that no other living person on this Combine-ridden world was experiencing. Something the doctor's couldn't cure.

She pushed these thoughts to the back of her mind, not wanting to think about them. She had to concentrate on something else, take her mind off things. But Chell couldn't. She couldn't help wondering why, why on earth _she, _the one who went through years of torture underground with no memories and an evil computer mocking her, criticizing her, doing everything in her power to make Chell feel as small as possible, and then as soon as she gets one breath of freedom, she gets shot in the leg and dragged back inside to face more torture without even knowing how much time has passed, and then as soon as things start looking good again her one friend betrays her and tries to kill her, has to face an end like this. Does someone out there hate her? Surely after all the hardships she went through, she should at least be granted a happy ending.

But no, instead she comes back to find that the world had been invaded by an evil, controlling alien race called the Combine that happened to be there thanks to her company's rivals, Black Mesa, so in fact, she would never be as free as she wanted to be. All her life, or at least the part she could remember, she had had someone breathing down her neck, making her feel useless, ordering her what to do, or trying to kill her. The Combine did all four, so she would have to go through that for the rest of her life, which, looking at the circumstances, wouldn't be much longer.

Because the truth was, Chell was dying. She had come to realise that now, and hated the world for hating her so much. She was experiencing side-effects of the neurotoxin. Although she had never inhaled enough to kill her at the time, she had inhaled enough to kill her later on, even though she didn't know it at the time. All the other chemicals and gases she had inhaled at the Enrichment Centre had gotten to her, and now they had fully started to take their toll. She had known it ever since the doctor asked her if she had been a smoker, which she hadn't, of course, because despite what GLaDOS thought, Chell was clever enough to work out what was causing the horrible coughing fits she had regularly.

So she had taken a break from work, telling her boss she was off sick and retiring to her bed. Things had only gone downhill from there. At one point she gathered enough strength to visit the doctors and get some pills, but they had done little help as they probably weren't designed for cases of 'neurotoxin'. In fact, no normal medicine nowadays, which Chell had figured upon arriving was the year 2020, would be able to cure Chell's predicament.

It felt like every five minutes she would break off into a coughing fit, doubling over with great, racking coughs shaking her shoulders. Every time one of them ended, she would straighten up groggily and open her murky eyes, peering round at her small cupboard of a bedroom with everything distorted and hazy from her blurry eyes. She could never get enough sleep, partly because she was too busy thinking about the death that threatened her looming over her shoulders, but partly because of the pain her couching caused her. Then again, there was the fact that whenever she went to sleep she had nightmares about her time in the Enrichment Centre, but it was mainly the two ones before.

A lot of her daily life was haunted by her memories of Aperture. Throughout the nine months she had been 'free', many sounds and sights would reawaken those memories, and she would be thrown into a violent hallucination where the real world doesn't exist anymore and she's battling Wheatley again. There are loads of other memories, like defeating GLaDOS and the childish yet haunting voice of the turrets, but her battle with Wheatley was by far the worst. It hurt her even more to think of him now, partly because of the hatred and betrayal she felt towards him but the aching pain that she would never see him again, because despite what he had done, they had been friends at some point.

Enough about her memories. Chell was far too busy thinking about her death to think about the cause of her death, but she was thrown into another coughing fit again, and it was one of the bad ones. They hurt her throat so bad it was almost like when she couldn't, or wouldn't, talk, but this was a different kind of pain. It was like thousands of wasps were stinging the inside of her throat, whereas her lack of voice was more like a rough ache. But she wasn't a 'mute' anymore, and had regained her will to speak. She still didn't speak often, as she didn't have many, no, _any _friends, because no-one could relate to her.

No-one normal, anyway. There were the Combine Resistance group, the heroes of City 17, but they were far too busy fighting off the Combine to talk to Chell, and she had had enough hard battles to want to join them, even though she felt a little guilty at the fact she knew she would probably be a good help to them.

After her night in the barn, she had found a country road and had followed it back to the area of City 17, where the residents helped her, took her in, and gave her a place to stay and a well-paying job, and they didn't even ask her where she had come from. Chell guessed they got amnesiac, scruffy fugitives looking for a place to stay often. But she had been back in civilisation nine months, and it was long enough to know that people were managing, albeit struggling, to live as normally as possible under Combine-Rule.

Chell had started afresh and had began to piece together a little about her life before waking up from statis the first time, and had somehow decided that she was most likely a daughter of an Aperture Scientist, and some incident or whatnot had happened on Bring Your Daughter To Work Day. She hadn't bothered to go much further than that, as things were starting to go well for Chell... until the chest pains started.

After recovering from her latest coughing fit, Chell drifted back to the present and decided to trudge back upstairs, granted a lot slower than she had gone down them. Perching herself down on her Companion Cube at the foot of her bed, she thought hard about her options and whether she should rise to meet her fate, or whether she should just let the neurotoxin take her like it should have done all those years ago. She wondered if GLaDOS felt guilty, as Chell didn't want to bother thinking about Wheatley, for what she had caused. After all, GLaDOS had been merciful at the end after realising Chell was her 'best friend', and after finding out about Caroline.

That led to Chell wondering if GLaDOS would choose to do anything to help her if she had the choice. Would she? Would she use the hidden-away Aperture technology and the knowledge of what _really _happened to cause Chell's 'sickness' to cure it, or would she leave her for dead? Chell pondered on this for a moment, and decided that GLaDOS probably would help her. GLaDOS probably _could _help her. And _that _led to Chell's crazy, crazy thought.

Chell never had been one to give up easily, and was now wondering how she had been so willing to give up earlier. Now that she thought about it, there was an obvious solution that had been staring her in the face all this time and she had passed it by. Chell had often had crazy thoughts, but this by far was one of the craziest.

She wouldn't give up. She wouldn't give in to death. She would stare her fate in the eye and pass it by using sheer determination and willingness, which was something she had only recently discovered after realising there was a way to stop her death. With this thought, she shrugged off her dressing gown and rapidly got changed into something suitable as fast as her muscles would allow her. Pulling on some trainers quickly, Chell charged down the stairs and shut the door violently. Locking the door behind her and coming out onto the streets of City 17, Chell looked left and right, and crossed the empty road which never had any cars on it anyway.

Luckily for Chell, no Combine forces were about and the only people she could see were members of the Freeman Combine Resistance scouting the streets making sure everything was okay. She would probably have to stay low though, as as much as the Resistance were good-natured, they wouldn't approve of her leaving the City boundaries alone, because they wouldn't understand and don't realise that she is quite capable of looking after herself. Sticking to the shadows, Chell darted as stealthily as she could through the City, which was where her training from hiding from turrets came in handy. She stayed out of sight and hidden, yet still managed to stay as un-conspicuous as possible.

Eventually, she reached the borders of the city. As the amount of buildings began to lessen and slowly break out onto a country road, Chell broke off into a run.

It was physically challenging, as Chell had become somewhat less fit after being released from Aperture, added to the fact she was dying from the side effects of neurotoxin, which made things difficult to breathe. But Chell had a feeling if she didn't get there soon, she would never get there, so she carried on running, knowing that this could be life or death. She needed to get there soon.

Because 'there' was the Aperture Science Enrichment Centre, the only place with the technology able to save her life. With GLaDOS's cooperation, Chell might just live. She was nearing the barn where she had spent her first night now, the wheat field in sight. It was barren at this time of year though, in the middle of winter. It was cold out, and Chell was beginning to regret not bringing a coat. The little dead wheat there was left brushed Chell's arms and knees sometimes, making the cold seem even more noticeable. The cold seeped into her bones and made her breath sting against her throat.

She needed to get there even sooner now or she would die a lot sooner than she was expecting. Truth was, Chell didn't know exactly where she was going. She recognised some of her surroundings, but she hadn't been here since that first breath of freedom and she hadn't even been concentrating particularly then. She was just scouring the empty fields looking desperately for the old tool shed that concealed the lift down into Aperture.

After a long while, she saw it, sat wearily in the distance. Her heart leapt in her chest; Chell was beginning to have second thoughts. What if GLaDOS said no? She began to wonder whether she should head back and die. No, she won't give up. That little tool shed might be her only chance of survival, and returning back to that place might even help her tie up the loose ends.

So Chell headed back to Aperture, possibly the only place that could save her life. Also, ironically, the very place she nearly died multiple times.

{O}

_Plug in wire there, screw in panelling here, screw bolt there, drill hole there. _The whole routine was getting positively boring, which was pretty annoying given that it was the only thing GLaDOS had to keep her boredom levels as low as possible in the agonising wait for ATLAS and P-Body to return with the moron. It had taken three moths already, and GLaDOS hoped it wouldn't take much longer. They only had three months left before their batteries ran out, and surely it doesn't take three months to travel to Utah! Yes, ATLAS and P-Body's low knowledge on the human would slow them down a bit- okay, a _lot,_ but GLaDOS didn't want them to have to run out of batteries because then she'd have to construct some new robots to test for the rest of eternity.

And now the days were even more boring than before. She was beginning to wish she hadn't released Chell, but her 'feelings' told her that that would be unjust, and that she had done the right thing. But that doesn't mean it was the right thing for GLaDOS. She had been through just as many hardships as Chell, being turned into a potato and all, but no-one seemed to care. No, she was just a robot with no feelings who wouldn't mind spending an eternity making android bodies that no-one would ever use, while her human best friend was happy and free above ground. GLaDOS had sacrificed so much, including her entertainment, and did anyone ever notice? No!

So now she was reduced to crafting android bodies on awaiting ATLAS and P-Body's return with Wheatley, so maybe she could get out of this limited-in-movements body and have a bit of a stretch. She wasn't looking forward that Core Transfer Receptacle though. She had also made one for Wheatley, so that he would be able to help more efficiently. The androids were just as perfectly crafted as ATLAS and P-Body's were, but God knows what Wheatley would do with it. She probably has to do some work on the Reassembling machine before he got here. That moron would be able to turn the android into a butterfingered, clumsy idiot no matter how perfect the design.

GLaDOS sighed and shook her core, the cables rattling behind her. She wondered how what used to be a life of excitement, had been reduced to this utterly boring _thing. _Something interesting needed to happen within the next month, or GLaDOS would probably go insane again. With no-one to test, life just wasn't worth living anymore.

She wished her designers hadn't allowed her to get bored. She was a computer, a machine, and machines don't get bored. Wheatley doesn't count. She was only supposed to get bored when she wasn't testing, which was what she was designed to do, but she had been bored long before ATLAS and P-Body left. Things had only gotten worse when they did.

GLaDOS pushed these thoughts from her mind and focused on the task at hand. It would keep her occupied and if she was concentrating more, maybe she would feel less bored. She was surprised she wasn't concentrating before; if GLaDOS had something to do, she would do it as quick as possible. It was hard to think she was bored even when she was doing something. Maybe she was making herself bored.

She stuck the last few panels into place and got the artificial skin ready. For Wheatley, he would look as human as ATLAS and P-Body's androids did, but as much as GLaDOS enjoyed human company, she wouldn't want to look like a human herself, so her android's skin was just going to be metal panelling, without any skin on the surface. She wouldn't be using it much anyway, as it was very limited in control and she wouldn't be able to do nearly as much as she could do in her main body.

She knew that Wheatley would probably take great joy in the ability to walk, and as much as GLaDOS despised the fact she was doing something good for him, it was necessary if he was going to be useful. She was probably going to enjoy watching the Core Transfer though. Oh, was going to enjoy that very much, because although she usually didn't like hearing the screams and was glad ATLAS and P-Body didn't have voices, she would take great joy in hearing him scream. She knew she was going to have to forgive him eventually though.

Forgiving him. Ah. That would be hard, and the concentration she would have to put into that would probably keep her from being bored for a while. Oh, but how GLaDOS needed something to do! While the machines got to work at covering the body in flesh, GLaDOS had nothing to do but wait. Nothing to construct. No-one to torment. Nobody... to _test. _

GLaDOS had never had that before. She didn't need to test _all_ the time, but it was what she was programmed to do, and had always had someone there to test for her. She had never, _ever _not had the ability to test before. There had always been resources available. Now there were none. She was alone. With no-one to test. She wasn't bored. She just wasn't testing.

She needed to test. _Now. _If a robot didn't do what they were programmed to do, they had no purpose. They were created for no reason. They were meaningless. And GLaDOS didn't like feeling meaningless. If GLaDOS felt meaningless, there was no point to anything anymore. She had never been meaningless before. GLaDOS needed to test. If she didn't soon, she would stay meaningless. She wouldn't be able to concentrate on anything, and if she couldn't concentrate on anything, she couldn't concentrate on testing, which means she wouldn't be able to regain her ability to concentrate, which means she wouldn't be able to concentrate on testing-

Oh no. GLaDOS had come close to creating a paradox.

PARADOXESOHNODON'TTHINKABOUTITDON'TTHINKABOUTITDON'TTHINKABOUTITDON'TTHINKABOUTIT. Banana. Testing. Dance. Pizza. Earth. Sea. Space. Science. Testing. Horses. Grass. Rabbit. Toilet. Electric fence. Pillow case. Car. Pencil. ANYTHINGBUTPARADOXES.

Okay. Great. Everything is under control. She managed to think about something else-OHNOSHETHOUGHTABOITITAGAIN. Okay. Stop. She would need to concentrate on something else, so she checked up the android to see how the machine was doing on the skin job. She was glad no-one was there at that point, because she would have been awfully embarrassed as her system became overridden and sparks had jumped everywhere. She genuinely switched off when she thought about- DON'TTHINKABOUTIT, and was lucky she would never have to watch what happened when she did. She shook herself down and cursed the programmer who made robots switch off when thinking about- DON'THINKABOUTIT, and whoever gave robots the ability to feel embarrassed.

Or bored. Or guilt. Or anger. Or anything really. Actually, what was the point again? It was so much simpler just to have a core for every feeling, but it was also a lot more pointless. COMPUTER'S SHOULDN'T HAVE FEELINGS. There. GLaDOS said it. Although she wasn't quite sure, as a part of her liked the feelings. Wait, wh-what? Okay, no, they were alright, but she much preferred it when she didn't have feelings. Feelings were bad. Feelings clouded her judgement. Like Wheatley.

Wheatley was like a feeling. A very annoying one. One of those feelings when you can't quite decide what it is, whether it's anger or happiness or something of the sort. Oh, well. GLaDOS didn't know much about feelings anyway. It was probably the one subject she wasn't a genius at.

She would need to learn how to control these 'feelings'. To get them out of her head, she focused back on the android, whose skin and flesh was now complete. It was also faceless, but GLaDOS would have to mould the face later on, much like doing plastic surgery.

GLaDOS sighed to herself and stared emotionlessly at the blank face before her. Her yellow optic flickered. If she had a face, she would have looked miserable. To anyone who knew her, would have taken the flicker of her optic as a sign she was sad, but to anyone else she looked as if she was dangerously angry or malfunctioning. But no-one was there to see it anyway. GLaDOS was just about to set to work, when a red light started flashing and a loud, high-pitched alarm started howling. She had only heard that alarm twice before; one, when a Black Mesa scientist had discovered the facility, and two, when she had set the neurotoxin on the scientists.

Disregarding the lifeless android, she span round and glared the Update screen up and down, trying to keep calm as a big red sign reading **INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT! **was flashing on the screen. GLaDOS switched the camera feed onto the outside of the lift and stared at it, her optic flickering and this time, it was anger. Very dangerous anger.

Her optic searched it, trying to pinpoint the location of the intruder. When she saw the intruder, however, she wasn't angry or furious. No, GLaDOS was very, very surprised.

On the screen, stood panting and shivering in front of the old shack, was none other than Chell. GLaDOS's eyes would have widened in surprise if she had any, and if she had any legs she would've taken a step back in disbelief. She could see Chell pounding against the old shed, tears streaming down her face. She could hear the knocking from above her.

GLaDOS was frozen. She had no idea what to do as her hardware tried to process what was happening. Yet in a split second, she came up with a decision. She hadn't followed all the warnings her Thought Processor sent her, or her instinct, or her super-computer intellect. Instead, GLaDOS followed her 'feelings'. She dived into the Control Panel, taking supreme access to every single thing in the facility. Using this access, she opened the shack door so it looked automatic from anyone up there.

Anyone but Chell. GLaDOS watched in interest as Chell paused on the screen, looking up uncertainly at the shack as doubt flashed across her eyes. She had pulled her jacket round her and rain poured from the sky, sticking her fringe to her forehead. GLaDOS would have held her breath if she had any, swarming with unexpected relief as Chell stepped inside the shed, and the door closed. As GLaDOS was expecting, a hole appeared in the roof of the Central AI Chamber and the bottom of the lift came circling slowly down to the ground. The electricity in GLaDOS's circuit's stopped. She definitely wasn't bored anymore.

She made herself comfortable and turned to face the lift as the doors slid open with a _zip _and out stepped GLaDOS's only friend, only test-subject, and the only human she knew, Chell. Her eyes were bloodshot and her face sweaty despite the rain and the cold. Her chest heaved with deep, ragged breaths that grew hoarser every time. GLaDOS racked her mind for something to say, but for the first time ever, she was lost for words. After a long time of staring at each other, GLaDOS said the first thing that came naturally: "Oh. It's you."

Chell nodded, opened her mouth to say something, but only managed a croaky, "Help me..." before collapsing to the ground in a feverish coughing fit, clutching her chest.

Trying not to overload from all the information her Thought Processor was sending her, GLaDOS stated, "So you're not a mute," before injecting a sedative into Chell's arm and whisking her away to the infirmary, hidden away in Aperture all these years.

{O}

When Wheatley woke up, he ached all over. His optic simply refused to open, and if it did, he probably wouldn't have wanted to see his surroundings anyway. Chances were, it'd be broken and fuzzy like the rest of his body. But he was glad he was only a sphere, because he didn't want to think about what a human might be experiencing in his predicament.

Wait, how did he get here again? The time before he woke up seemed a bit blurry, and Wheatley began to wonder if his Memory Storage Disk was broken. He hoped it was, because that way he'd be able to forget all the bad things he did to Che- oh, wait, no, not broken. Wheatley groaned slightly in pain, and was happy to see that his Voice Modulator was working. He could also hear it as well, so that's his Sound Modulator working.

Now he just needed to try and open his optic a crack to take a look at his surroundings. His thoughts drifted to how he had got here in the first place, and all at once the memories resurfaced. He had been in space, before that meteorite hit and he had been dragged in it's trail, and the last thing he had seen was- oh no. Not Earth. Earth was covered in water, what if Wheatley had landed in the sea, was he dead, was he dying? He didn't want to think about it.

No, he wasn't in the sea, he could tell because his panelling had fallen off on one side and if he was in the sea, water would have gotten in and short-circuited his wires straight away. So he was on land, that's for sure. With the knowledge that he wasn't dead, which he wasn't sure was good or bad, Wheatley summoned the willpower to open his optic. When he did, he quickly shut it again from the amount of dust her saw hanging around. That can't be good for him.

From the glimpse he had seen, he was in a very dust area where the ground was reddy-orange. He wasn't quite sure how to describe it though, as he had never been outside before. Outside. Huh. That was a strange feeling. To be outside for the first time, not counting space. He wriggled slightly on the ground, feeling some of the life squeeze back into his hardware. Oh, that felt better. But he still hurt terribly, and his Thought Processor seemed to go a bit haywire. He was alive, that was for sure. He didn't know where he was, only that he was outside and he wasn't in the sea. His database alerted him that he had been down here 90 days- wait, 90 days? That's nearly three months!

Okay, so he had been here 90 days. He'd just have to sit and wait until someone found him, or if no-one did, until his battery died down. Which would be another 14,339 days. Great. So with the thought that he was meaningless, Wheatley went into temporary shutdown, also known as 'offline mode'. He didn't willingly, as GLaDOS told him he would die if he ever went into offline mode, but his body didn't protest as it needed time to repair the internal damages, which it wouldn't be able to do unless someone found him. Oh well.

The days passed, and still, no-one found him. To any normal person, he would have looked like a broken, dirty piece of junk someone had left behind and abandoned. Now he had gone into offline mode, he would show no signs of life until some repairs had been done. And if no-one found him, he would stay in offline mode until his battery died, and then there would be no chance of waking up, so he would be as good as dead.

He only managed to wake up one day when there were some mild disturbances. Wheatley hadn't been repaired, no, but while in his unconscious state someone had lifted him up and was now carrying him. Due to being programmed to wake up when disturbed in offline mode, so that he could be alerted, he woke up even groggier than he had been the first time. He opened his optic and peered round, his vision murky, before realising he was being carried in someone's arms.

The arms looked human enough, but Wheatley had lived with robots and cores and machines and computers long enough to recognise the certain air the person carrying him carried about them. He could even feel the mild vibration underneath the layers of skin and flesh tissue and hear the faint _whirr _when they moved.

Yes, the person carrying him was robotic. Meaning that he must have come from a very advanced science-y place, and as the world couldn't have advanced much in the few months Wheatley had been gone, Wheatley was probably headed to somewhere like Aperture, if not Aperture itself, because nowhere else would have the technology to create this. Despite some belief, even Wheatley was clever enough to work that out.

So now he felt safe in the arms of one of his kind and the prospect he was going somewhere he could be prepared, Wheatley had a look at how long he had been out. Thirty-two days, his database told him. Only around a month. After his body figured out the disturbances were not a threat, he slipped back into offline mode, as he still hadn't been repaired. So he waited in his unconscious state to be taken to the one place he could be repaired.

The third time Wheatley woke up, he was actually able to open his optic. This new area had no dust, so he could look around fully, and to his delight, his vision was clear. His Memory Storage Disk was working perfectly, he saw, and he remembered that the last time he was conscious was when he was being carried by that human-looking robot. They must have taken him somewhere to be repaired, Wheatley realised. His circuits bubbled with new electricity and sparks seemed to dance around his body. He could feel new panels screwed onto his side, where the old ones fell off. Wheatley had never felt fresher, and it was as if he was as good as new.

After lying there in blissful harmony, not wanting to think about all the gritty stuff that probably came with it, as it was slightly too good to be true and too-good-to-be-true stuff often came with tonnes of garbage. But he realised that he couldn't lie there forever and eventually had to try and gather information about his location.

He was in an awfully familiar place, with white, sterile walls and complicated-looking equipment lying about. Everything was bright and clean and looked artificial, and Wheatley realised with a horrible jolt that he was in the Repair Chamber of Aperture. He squeaked and looked around frantically, finding himself face-to-face with the scariest sight he had ever witnessed.

GLaDOS was staring down at him from a screen in the corner of the room, her yellow optic glistening dangerously. The fact she could show no emotion made it even scarier, and Wheatley found himself yelping and spluttering meaningless words that made no sense. It could have been translated as something like, 'I'm sorry, so, so sorry, I'm really very sorry, please forgive me, I'm sorry,' but he spouted them so fast it became an unintelligent jumble.

GLaDOS just looked at him, before speaking in the same robotic, monotone voice that was so unnervingly terrifying, "Welcome back, moron."

Wheatley would have protested that he wasn't a moron, but figured it wasn't the best thing to do in this situation. He was about to speak and managed, "I'm-" before GLaDOS interrupted him.

"I already know you're sorry. I saw how guilty you felt in space when looking into your Memory Storage Disk. Forgive me for invading your privacy and searching into every thought and feeling you experienced. I only did it for science."

Wheatley winced, trembling. GLaDOS continued. "Don't worry; my new 'feelings' that I've developed have persuaded me to forgive you, even though I still think you're a moron. Later on, though, I have a surprise for you."

"What is it?" he asked miserably, his situation beginning to dawn on him. GLaDOS's surprises were never nice.

"I would tell you, but then it wouldn't be a surprise." Then the screen switched off, leaving Wheatley as clueless as ever as GLaDOS disappeared from view without a word.

After an agonising wait, of which Wheatley spent staring at the door dreading the moment it opened, the thing that actually _happened _was when the screen in the corner flickered back into life and GLaDOS appeared, once again. Wheatley groaned.

"Why are you back?"

"Time for the surprise. I think you'll like it. Well, part of it anyway."

Wheatley only had time to grumble, 'what was the point in the wait?' before the door opened and what he recognised as the old bodies of ATLAS and P-Body came in. ATLAS came and picked him up despite his strangled protests and carried him down the dark, grotty 'basement' of Aperture. His old arms weren't nearly as comfy as the android one, Wheatley noted as he blinked at his familiar surroundings.

Eventually they brought him to the Central AI Chamber which had been cleaned and redone, looking like it did all those years ago. Wheatley yelped and started shaking in fear at seeing GLaDOS face-to-face. "Welcome back, moron," she said, her voice almost threatening. But then, Wheatley realised, her voice was always like that.

"You-you've already said that."

"I know. I just wanted to say it again, prelude your surprise."

Then a robotic arm dropped from the ceiling and pressed the red button next to GLaDOS, from which appeared the Core Transfer Receptacle, slowly rising from the floor.

"Surprise."

Wheatley started trembling even more. "You-you're not going t-to put me b-back in th-the main body, are- are you?"

GLaDOS laughed, a horrible metallic laugh. "Of course not, you moron. How dumb do you take me for?"

"What a-are you going t-to do th-then?"

Then something else started rising from the floor. An android body, similar to that of ATLAS and P-Body when they had collected him. Wheatley could not even squeak.

Then GLaDOS spoke again, menacingly. "I'm going to give you a new body."

Surprise.

**A/N. I'm not too pleased with this one, I think my writing started failing towards the end. Did they seem out of character at all? I hope I didn't do too badly. :/ Anyway, my first fanfiction with more than one chapter! Yay! I'm glad this one's finished. Third one's up soon. Updates will probably be around every four days, depending how busy I am. Anyway, I was half way through this when I realised how similar it is to loads of other Portal fanfics out there. I'm sorry it's been done so many times before. :( Also, although it did mention Half-Life earlier, it's not a crossover. It's just cause they're set in the same world and even though Half-Life is mentioned, the characters don't interact, therefore it's not a crossover. For those of you who are expecting Gordon Freeman, I wouldn't get your hopes up.**

**Moving on, forgive any mistakes as although I proofread it, the website screws it up somehow and mistakes that I didn't even make appear. Oh well. **

**Reviews are greatly appreciated!**

**Thanks! :)**

**~Franki**

**EDIT: I've changed a few things in this chapter, thanks to some advice from a reviewer. Hopefully it's not too noticeable. :P**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N. Yeah, the author's note is going to be at the beginning in this chapter. I just needed to put this to sort out any confusion; I changed the ending of the last chapter, so you might want to go re-read that if you haven't already or you might get a little confused in this one. Also, I kinda forgot the disclaimer for the last two chapters, and although I meant to put it in the last chapter, I forgot. So here it is:**

**Disclaimer: All copyrights belong to Valve, not me.**

**Anyway, so uh, read and review, I guess! Enjoy this chapter! :)**

**Seriously though, please review. **

**~Franki**

**P.S. Sorry it took so long, I've been busy. :( But, I will give a virtual hug to anyone who can find the **_**Red Dwarf **_**reference!**

When she finally awoke, Chell's body felt like it was as light as a feather yet like it was being squashed and stampeded by thousands of angry elephants at the same time. A cool calmness hung in the room, smoothing out the eerie silence that had settled comfortably there. After lying still peacefully for a while, Chell drew in a great breath as she sucked air down into her lungs. For the first time in a while, the breath was as easily drawn as scooping water into a bucket, without any of the shaking and hoarseness every breath for the past few months had had. It was cold as it gushed down her throat, like ice being melted in her mouth. Everything throbbed, but it was somehow calming rather than painful.

She rolled over, a slight groan escaping her lips, as her head seemed unable to cooperate properly with her body and it felt like horrible pains were trying to weave their way through the serenity that currently held her brain. It was like having a battle with your conscience, as part of her wanted to lie there forever and the other half wanted to get up and find out what had happened. But her body didn't understand why it was feeling this great and her head couldn't decide whether it wanted to give the body and mind access to the memories, or it could have just been trying to fish them out.

It felt like her memories were just starting to thread together, but she didn't want to bother with them at the moment, not just yet. So although she had a basic idea of what could have happened, she pushed them to the back of her mind and decided to bother with them later, knowing the basics of what had happened but not wanting to admit it.

After having a mental battle, Chell sat up. It smelled like hospitals; clean and sterile, but with the faint aroma of sickness and blood lingering in the background. She grimaced. The smell only reminded her of her time in Aperture, and boy did she not want to go there. Placing her hands on either side of her, she felt around and discovered that she was on something soft. It might have been a bed, but there was no cover, so she wasn't sure.

When she turned her head slightly, there was a white flash through her eyelids and she flinched, covering her closed eyes with one arm. Her insides pretested at the sudden movement and her stomach lurched, her heart jumping up into her throat. At this the dull throbbing in her head grew slightly and she groaned again as the ache rippled throughout her body. Her eyes now stung from the sudden light and her body was feeling less 'great.'

Chell pulled her legs up to her chest and curled up into a little ball, only daring to open her eyes when they were protected by the shade of her knees. The pain slowly brought her back to her full state of consciousness and as her brain began to feel more awake the memories and realisation of where she was flooded back and it her like an electric shock. Her eyes flicked open as she jumped and scrambled hastily to the edge of the bed, flopping her legs over the side and pulling herself to her albeit shaky feet.

Thoughts raced through her mind, darting out of reach and bouncing off the sides as if teasing her as she tried to grab one and focus on it. All the thoughts and feelings she was experiencing at the same time made her feel sick. She remembered it all clearly now; she had been running, endless, tiring running, and then- and then-

Aperture.

She had run to Aperture to be healed. Healed of the problems the neurotoxin had caused her.

And now she had woken up in a strange room, for the third time in her life, which smelled the same as the last two times. Although the confusion and the minor ache that resigned in her body made her feel sick, her body felt as if a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. The invisible force that was previously crushing her lungs and gone, and every breath was smooth and relaxed.

Which could only mean one thing.

GLaDOS had cured her.

_GLaDOS had _cured _her._

She was healed! Chell had been cured and now she wouldn't have to die. She was alive and would live a great deal longer, thanks to the person who was actually partly the cause of her suffering in the first place. A small smile managed to spread itself across her face, just slightly. It was relief. Relief and gratefulness.

She looked around the room, which looked like a hospital room where she was the only patient, for any signs of life. It appeared that she was the only one there. She sighed, and dropped her instinctual fighting stance, plopping herself down onto the bed with a huff. The pain was starting to subside now, leaving only the good feeling of being as good as new left. Chell stretched, feeling more of the life surge through her stiff arms. Her head was feeling a lot clearer now.

So Chell sat there, on the edge of the bed, thinking to herself for a _long _time. It was a while before what sounded at first like a pre-recorded message to anyone but Chell filled the room, making her head jerk up as she listened carefully to the robotic, synthesized voice. It sent chills fluttering down her spine. "Oh. You're awake. I suppose I should congratulate you for surviving the science experiments I performed on you in your sleep."

Chell tensed.

"I'm joking. Congratulations for surviving the very detailed, complicated operation that I performed on you."

Once again, Chell said nothing.

"You can say thank you, if you want. I now know you can speak, so there is no point in pretending to be a mute."

Same reaction.

"Not even a simple thank you for saving your life?"

Still nothing.

"You cold, heartless person."

When Chell finally did speak, she only uttered one word. "GLaDOS."

"That is my name, yes. Subject might be showing signs of possible brain damage."

Chell sighed and started pacing about the room.

"Pacing isn't going to help, you know. I have some things for you, but I'm not going to tell you what they are until you say something."

Then Chell threw her hands up in the air as a sign of defeat and slumped down onto the bed, hanging her head in her hands. "Well, that's a shame," GLaDOS said. "It seems like you don't want to be free again. I'm honoured that you want to stay down here testing for an eternity with me."

At this Chell sat up and glared around at the room, aiming to pinpoint the camera with which GLaDOS was watching her every move so she could stare GLaDOS down evilly and let her know she wasn't happy. When she did find it, tucked away in the corner of the room, she glared glowered angrily at it with all her might. She swore she saw the camera flinch slightly.

"Ah. I know something that will make you happy. The other day I discovered that blackbirds have actually gone extinct on the surface. Isn't that great?"

Chell said nothing. "Oh. I found it interesting."

Chell was half tempted to blurt out, 'Well, you would, wouldn't you?' and almost did, before she thought against giving GLaDOS the satisfaction of a response. She still wasn't sure what GLaDOS's intentions were, even though she was her supposed 'best friend'.

Chell needed to say something. GLaDOS wasn't going to do anything constructive unless Chell said something, and if she didn't she would be stuck in here listening to GLaDOS's poor attempt at conversation for the rest of her life. But she needed to find a way to say it in as little words as possible...

"What do you want from me?" she decided on eventually. Her voice was slightly croaky, even though her lungs were fine.

"Speech. Which you have just given me, so now I can tell you why you are here and the consequences of coming back."

Chell frowned.

"It appears your voice is slightly hoarse from underuse. You were comatose for 30 days. Which is a long time. But then again, it wasn't much compared to your last time in statis."

An emotion Chell could not describe flooded through her. It was like anger and happiness merged together to create some utterly weird, strange feeling that feels much like a giant snail trying to crawl over your body. Chell shivered and sat down on the bed again, hugging her arms.

"Are you going to say something else?"

"No," Chell said, even though she knew it made no sense. She was expecting GLaDOS to say some snarky remark back, but there was no response. She looked back up at the camera, expecting it to move, but it wasn't even switched on. It was hanging lazily, and even the bright lights hanging from the ceiling were growing slightly dim. Panic started to build up inside her. Her eyes darted round the room frantically.

"GLaDOS?" she called wearily. There was still no reply. "GLaDOS?" she shouted now, her voice slightly louder and more alert.

"GLaDOS?" Chell yelled, cupping her hands round her mouth and racing round the room uselessly. The lights began to flicker, before switching off completely with a bout of electrical sparks, and the automatic doors that had been locked before were open and stuck. Not knowing what to do, Chell ran out of the door onto a metal runway, the walls dark and the atmosphere murky, so unlike the cleanliness of the room behind her. She covered her mouth with an arm and tried to ignore the empty management rail above her, now never to be used again.

Knowing that shouting was useless, Chell scampered through the facility, darting around as fast as her legs would carry her. The setting was so similar to the time when she was escaping with Wheatley, but she didn't want to think about that. Something had happened to GLaDOS, and Chell needed to know what it was.

Slowly, the surroundings began to merge into the familiar areas Chell was used to. She remembered every turn and corner, every cove in every wall and she soon found herself leading the way to the main AI chamber.

When she finally got there, she wasn't greeted with what she expected. The last time she had been here, plants and vines had snaked their way around the ruins of the explosion, and water had dripped from the ceiling into large areas where it had gathered into dirty, sewage-coloured pools. But now, the walls and ceiling were clean and white, like they had been when Chell had first been here and GLaDOS tried to... well, you know...

Broken debris had been lifted off the floor and chucked away, damages caused by the explosion repaired and patched up, the entire dome-shaped room looking as good as new. Chell gasped and her running slowed down to a leisurely pace in which Chell could walk comfortably and gawk at the place. But not only had the scenery changed; the atmosphere had too. It was so much calmer and peaceful, and this was the first time Chell had ever entered it without the prospect of death slicing through her thoughts.

After getting used to it slightly, Chell hurried. In the centre of the room, rather than alive and moving, GLaDOS was hanging limply, her robotic 'body' drooping and lifeless. "GLaDOS?" Chell murmured her already quiet voice now barely audible. She ran towards her, a lump forming in her throat at the lifelessness in GLaDOS's blank optic. "GLaDOS," she whispered again forlornly, running her fingers gently down the side of her cool frame.

Then, to her surprise, there was a _zip _and a _whirr _and the body twitched frantically as if a thousand volts of electricity were being poured into it, (which wouldn't be too bad saying GLaDOS is a computer) before the optic flashed once and she fell limp again. There was a horrible moment of silence.

Chell's heart pounded against her chest from fear, worry and anxiety. "GLaDOS?"

As if reacting to the sound of her voice, the robot's frame whipped up, the optic flickering and a faint whizz in the background before shaking herself down, the cables rattling behind her and glaring at Chell in the eye. Chell leaned back uncertainly, eyes wide. Inside she could barely contain her relief.

"You didn't see that, did you?"

"See what?" Chell asked, just managing to keep the smile that was creeping onto her face away. She could only try to suppress the giggles that were rising up inside her at the realisation that she had created something somewhat similar to a paradox when she replied, 'No,' earlier, which was caused GLaDOS's 'mishap'. Although it wasn't actually a paradox, anything remotely similar to one would send GLaDOS into overdrive as they made her think of the proper ones such as 'this next statement is true. The previous sentence is false,' so on, so forth.

GLaDOS narrowed her optic further, staring at Chell with an unfathomable eye. "Good. Because if you had seen it, you wouldn't be my best friend anymore."

{O}

"Even ATLAS and P-Body are better than you, and they're not even designed to be," GLaDOS said as Chell sighed in defeat and plopped herself down onto the Weighted Storage Cube that she just couldn't find a way to transport to the button, which was on a moving platform above a nasty-looking, murky-brown, toxic liquid. The tiled ceiling above the platform with the button was entirely un-portable and there were no light bridges or funnels or catapults that could get her up there. GLaDOS was gleeful in the fact she had managed to build a test that had, for once, stumped Chell. Of course, GLaDOS knew that her victory would be short-lived because it was Chell doing the test, and Chell would always find a way.

Eventually.

It turned out Chell had found a way, and executed it perfectly as she was now triumphantly walking through the round, automatic door that led to the next chamber, which GLaDOS had not yet built as she was focused on watching Chell. Just before Chell was about to step onto the lift, the doors zipped shut in her face as GLaDOS struggled to create the next test in the little time she had. When she failed to come up with something that could actually confuse Chell, she had to settle for one she had made before so Chell would be occupied with that while GLaDOS built the next test chamber, which would hopefully be even harder. After Chell had descended down the lift, her patience wearing thin since the door slammed shut in her face, she made her way into the next chamber. On the screen with which GLaDOS was watching her, she could see Chell's face visibly fall into a frown as the familiarity of the chamber dawned on her. She rolled her eyes and completed the chamber efficiently, leaving GLaDOS just enough time to craft the next one. Chell probably would have said something like, 'I've already done this one before,' but she didn't, knowing that GLaDOS would have her reasons.

So she did that chamber and moved on, relief spreading on her face at the new chamber she was presented with. While GLaDOS was in between designing the next chamber and watching Chell, she watched with interest as Chell analysed the chamber, made a few test runs to see if there was anything else that needed doing to complete it, before finding the correct solution and performing it effortlessly, only near-dying a couple of times. GLaDOS even threw in a couple of sarcastic remarks she had cleverly crafted to put Chell off, but they seemed ineffective as Chell now knew they meant nothing. A victorious smirk was spread on her face by the time she had finished the test, and at this point GLaDOS had finished designing the next one and was already on to the one after that.

The two did this most days, as Chell was still recovering from her lungs and needed to stay in the facility while she healed fully. She knew GLaDOS would let her free when she needed it, as the two had formed something that could be called a bond. That didn't stop GLaDOS acting as if she hated Chell for trying to murder her, (twice) and succeeded in one of them. Chell built up her strength again by doing tests, and she could even concentrate more now she knew she was only doing them to pass the time, rather than to win her freedom.

"This is fun; it's just like the old days, don't you think?" GLaDOS drawled one day. "You almost dying. Me attempting to craft tests at the alarming rate you're completing them. It's almost as if you're _trying to _kill _me again._"

Chell had said nothing, but continued shooting portals as if the statement had flown right over her head. "Someone might even think we were strangers. What with the way you _never talk to me."_

When Chell still didn't respond to that, GLaDOS continued. "You won't even talk to me after that? You really are a horrible person. You cold, heartless, not-so-mute murderer."

At this, Chell did speak, but it wasn't what GLaDOS was expecting her to say. "You really need to think of better names to call me. The 'cold, heartless murderer' thing is getting old."

GLaDOS was frozen momentarily, before her instincts kicked in and the first snarky comeback that popped up in her Thought Processor was blurted out of her Voice Modulator before she had time to think about it. "I only repeat it because you can never get it through that thick skull of yours that you are, in fact, a cold, heartless murderer. But unfortunately, you are so dumb you don't even understand how cold and heartless you actually are."

Chell just rolled her eyes and continued testing, ignoring GLaDOS's statement, which basically proved it, even though it was untrue and GLaDOS knew it. She sighed heavily into the loudspeaker and continued watching Chell complete yet another test.

The real reason GLaDOS was so intent in making sure Chell was busy testing and the only time she stopped was when she went back to the Relaxation Chamber to rest for the night, was that GLaDOS was trying to keep Chell away from something.

Some_one_ would probably be more accurate, though.

Every day when she watched Chell test, GLaDOS was secretly hoping Chell would stay busy enough in her time that when she left she wouldn't suspect anything out of the ordinary was going on. Because, truth be told, something out of the ordinary _was _going on, and it was GLaDOS's fault and now she regretted it and she hoped that she would be able to sort it out before Chell left. If Chell found out... well, GLaDOS didn't want to think about it.

She didn't want Chell to find out, because, well, Chell wouldn't like it. She wouldn't like what GLaDOS was hiding. _Who_ GLaDOS was hiding. She _doesn't _like who GLaDOS was hiding. And GLaDOS wanted to make sure that whoever she was hiding stayed hidden until Chell had been healed and was gone for good.

GLaDOS was growing more nervous every day. Every day the person she was hiding grew closer to the day they could be allowed to move freely, and although every day Chell was closer to being fully healed, she wasn't healing fast enough and GLaDOS was beginning to fear the worst. She had spent so long repairing the facility and it still wasn't nearly finished, so she definitely didn't want it to be destroyed again. That's what would happen if she failed to keep them separate and they somehow met.

No. GLaDOS would have to stop thinking like this. Chell would recover soon, and then she could go and GLaDOS could concentrate on- wait, what was Chell doing? She was yelling something, her face flustered and her eyes burning with anger. From the way she was cupping her hands round her mouth, GLaDOS guessed she had been shouting for a while.

When she had drifted back from her thoughts and her sensors clicked back into place she could hear Chell yelling now, "GLADOS! GLAAAAADOOOOS!"

All manner of speech seemed to fly out of GLaDOS's mind at that moment, so she was inconveniently left speechless. She desperately racked her database for something to say, but all information had disappeared. It was a while before she found something that would be okay to say. "I don't know why you're shouting," she thought of eventually. "_I'm_ not going to respond. You've never spoken to me before, so now I'm not going to speak to you." Good. Now at least it looked like she had a reason.

Chell pouted, placing a hand on her hip and huffing. "Could I take a break? Go back to the Relaxation Chamber?"

No. No, Chell did not want a break. It was too early. What if she saw... no. No, no, no, no, no. Chell was not going to have a break until GLaDOS says she can have a break, because Chell can only have a break once GLaDOS needs her out of the way to do some more work on-

"Please?" Chell asked again. "I'm tired."

No, he would be about and about by now. If Chell headed back to the Relaxation Chamber before it was the usual time _he _headed back, there was the risk they would come across each other. A risk GLaDOS was not going to take, under any circumstances, _ever._

"No." GLaDOS said. "If you want rest that badly, I will post some of Aperture's homemade biscuits and some warm milk into your test chamber for you, but you are _not _going back to the Relaxation Chamber."

There was a splash and a tiny sound of something breaking, and Chell looked over to where GLaDOS had dropped a biscuit and some milk down the Weighted Storage Cube Chute, but both of which were now a puddle and a pile of crumbs on the tiled floor. "Oops. I guess you won't be getting a rest anymore. You'll just have to keep testing."

Chell frowned, and shot a portal above the toxic goo and another one under the crumbs and puddle, watching with delight as they fell from the ceiling and disintegrated in the waste. The milk left a sickly looking patch in the brown water where it had blended in and merged with the toxic waste. "Well, that wasn't very nice." GLaDOS said as she watched Chell happily complete the now-biscuit-and-milk-free chamber. "What did they ever do to you?"

Ignoring her, Chell continued the test chamber, looking very proud of herself when she had finished. Moving on to the next chamber, she was welcomed with the sight of a glass of milk a plate of cookies, waiting just in front of the next test. "I felt bad about the last incident, so I cooked up some biscuits and milk. Enjoy."

A small smile crept it's way onto Chell's face as she took off the portal gun and helped herself to a biscuit. She was just about to bite into it, when she paused and held the biscuit away. "Why biscuits? What about cake?"

There was then a long moment of silence. Chell wondered if GLaDOS had gone shutdown again. Then her voice was projected into the loudspeaker, and GLaDOS said in an icy tone, "Cake is a forbidden topic here. You'll be wise to never mention it again."

Chell's face faltered, before she shrugged and carried on munching on the biscuits happily. She was always uneasily looking around, as if something would jump out at her any second.

Meanwhile, in the Central AI Chamber, GLaDOS was watching the screen where Chell was now continuing the tests, her energy restored by the biscuits. Then the screen flickered and switched to the Repair Chamber, where an android was stumbling weakly on his new legs and plugging a wire into the back of his neck, his eyes closing and his body collapsing as soon as he did so. Relief flooded through GLaDOS's circuits. She had managed to keep them from meeting without arousing suspicion.

This time, anyway.

{O}

Wheatley had never been in as much pain. EVER. Not even since he was transferred into GLaDOS's body, not when Chell had attached all those corrupted cores onto him, never. This pain was ten times worse than the first transfer. He had screamed. Horrible, blood-curdling cries of agony. It was like water being shot into his circuits at a thousand miles an hour. This transfer was a lot longer than the last one, a lot more complex. Rather than his core just being placed on a different body, he was being put in a different body, one that was a lot more compound to just move or control than the last one. So it had hurt like hell.

He still ached now. He could feel it every time he attempted to move, his joints still getting used to his core and his mind still getting used the body. He had lived in that sphere all his life, and to suddenly go into something so damn _complicated_, it was like moving from a shack to a palace.

The sphere had been simple. It had the basic functions, data, hardware, and it had suited him just fine. He had been able to move and turn and his actions were able to express his emotion and feeling. This new body was so incredibly different, the fact that he could move so freely and smoothly and now had all these new limbs able to do _so much_, it was all too overwhelming to take in at once.

He could feel now, yes, he could feel before, but now it was so much more advanced. The skin on the surface had thousands of tiny little touch sensors, which transmitted signals to his hardware which sent signals to his mind, telling him what he was touching and what it felt like. He could feel cool, smooth surfaces and rough, jagged edges, and he could sense the warmth or cold they emanated.

It was so completely _brilliant _Wheatley was having a hard time taking it all in. As much as he enjoyed being able to feel and touch things, the new body's functions were tonnes more difficult to control than the last ones. To just be able to move his fingers was a bit of a challenge, let alone standing up and walking. It took a long time to master the art of moving about by himself, and he still wasn't good at it. He limped and stumbled everywhere he went, moving about like a sack of potatoes with an IQ of 3. That's a poor IQ for a glass of water.

Every day he would get up and explore the facility, trying not to do anything that would get him told off by GLaDOS, though she rarely spoke to him anyway, and every night he would head back to the Repair Chamber where he was currently resigning and recharge using the socket in the back of his neck. Apparently ATLAS and P-Body only needed to charge every six months when in the android bodies, because they were already used to having bodies that could walk and move like humans. But Wheatley needed to charge every night to be able to have enough energy to do anything the next day, just while he got used to it.

So he practised and practised and practised until he could walk 20 metres without collapsing on his strange, foreign legs. How humans managed to learn it at the simple age of _two _was beyond him. In fact, being able to live their whole lives in such advanced bodies without being born with advanced knowledge like Personality Constructs is a mystery to Wheatley.

So although the new body is pretty cool, it was a very painful experience getting into it and a very tricky experience using it. He only had ATLAS and P-Body for moral support, which wasn't very helpful as they couldn't talk because their android bodies were under construction by GLaDOS. GLaDOS never spoke to him, and she spent most of her days sat in the Central AI Chamber looking like she was sleeping, but Wheatley had known that when the DOS system went like that, whoever was occupying it was observing something on one of the internal screens using the many hundreds of cameras dotted around the facility. He only knew this after accidently walking past one day, as he would refuse to go back to that place on purpose. No, the Central AI Chamber brought back too many horrible memories.

Then the days started to merge together as GLaDOS became increasingly occupied with some mystery task, and only ever spoke to him to make sure he was back in the Repair Chamber before 8:30 every night. She would go berserk if he failed to get back there before curfew, and Wheatley knew his body was too valuable to be crushed as it would take too long to repair, and GLaDOS would make no hesitation in the crushing of his body if he stepped a foot, (which he now had,) out of line. He had seen ATLAS and P-Body be crushed and recreated in an amount of seconds, but that was only in their simple testing bodies and he wouldn't want to think about how long it would take to rebuild such a complicated body. It took humans nine months!

So his days were spent practising walking and rambling on to himself about all the thoughts that were drifting through his head at that particular moment. Wheatley was a very sociable person; he needed someone to have a conversation with, even if he did most of the talking. If he didn't, he would just talk to himself, and now he actually had a mouth to do it! He would talk and talk and talk as if someone else was actually there and listening, but no-one but GLaDOS, ATLAS and P-Body were in the facility. They would be the only people he would ever see for the rest of eternity, now his battery could never die out.

No, Wheatley had tried to murder the only person who had ever listened to him. They had shot him into space, but he guessed he deserved it. That was probably the most common thing that ever came out of his ramblings, but no matter how many times he said sorry, no-one would ever hear it.

That was, until one day, when GLaDOS was acting stranger than usual. He had been flexing his fingers, (fingers! He actually had _fingers_!) in one of the old test chambers, when GLaDOS had actually _spoken _to him. Well, spoken probably wouldn't be the right word for it. More like _ordered. _"I hope you're not enjoying yourself, moron. You're not allowed enjoyment. Now get out of the test chamber, as I need to do some work on it."

This had confused Wheatley, as there was no need for repairing the test chamber, when it was one of the single ones and ATLAS and P-Body only used the cooperative tests. "Wh-what would b-be the p-point in th-that?" he stuttered. "C-can't I just stay a-a l-l-little bit longer? Why don't you just d-destroy th-the chamber a-afterwards?"

"Oh, stop your stuttering. Moron."

"I c-can't help it! Y-you're s-scary!" he protested. "Wh-why are y-you d-doing it anyw-way? There wouldn't be much p-point in r-repairing the t-test chamber, 'cause, y-you know, n-no-one's gonna use it... a-and isn't it f-far too easy f-for ATLAS and P-P-Body, well, it's actually t-too easy f-for anybody- except m-me, but th-that's 'cause I'm m-me, isn't it? I-" and he would have continued, before GLaDOS spoke again.

"You need to get out of this chamber, because I'm telling you to," her voice was unnervingly calm. "The purpose of what I'm doing and why I'm doing it is of little use to you, and it will probably be too much for your small, artificial, moronic brain to handle. Get out now, or I will be _forced to blow you up. _And this time, I'm not kidding."

Wheatley squeaked and scrambled to his feet, his bright blue eyes darting round the room uncertainly as he pinpointed the exit. The room could no longer be called a chamber; it was one of the easier ones, and it was so broken the door was stuck open and you didn't even need a portal gun to complete it. Like the rest of the unrepaired facility, it was overrun with vines and greenery and the walls were cracked and dirty, water dripping from the ceiling and electrical sparks flying out from most of the broken appliances.

When a panel jerked awkwardly out from the wall and started coming towards in a manner that looked potentially dangerous, Wheatley took this as a sign that he needed to get out _now. _He limped over to the door, the panel sliding back into place as he retreated, and only when he was outside the chamber did he lean against the wall, slumping down to the floor and closing his eyes. He needed some rest. He wasn't physically tired, no, androids don't get tired, but emotionally tired. Now that he had a different body and everything was happening at once, he was hit with a torrent of emotions he had to face every day.

Wheatley sighed and pulled himself up when the doors zipped shut in what would have been in a dismissive way, but couldn't really be pulled off since the doors were broken and it took a couple of tries to get them closed. Then he set off back along the metal walkway, his footsteps clanging and clanking against the metal and echoing around the long, empty facility. He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his Aperture Lab coat and continued 'walking' trying to ignore the racket he was making and the trip in his step every time he lost his footing, which was quite often.

He was just about to turn another corner, when GLaDOS's voice appeared again. "Stop!" she commanded, causing him to halt in mid-stride just before turning the corner.

"Wh-what is it? Is it d-dangerous? Oh, p-please tell me it's n-not dangerous. Oh, no, oh no, oh no, oh no, it's d-dangerous, isn't it! I-I'm just g-gonna head b-back now, uh, i-if you d-don't mind!" he faltered, turning on his heel and walking away.

"No! Don't go there either. If you value your life, you will stay there."

Wheatley whined. This was all so confusing and he didn't need extra stress piled on top of what he already had! There was a clang and a bang, before the zip of a door opening and closing could be heard and Wheatley was frozen, waiting for GLaDOS to say something. "Now, head back to the Central AI Chamber." When he didn't move, she snapped, "_Now."_

He winced and tripped over his feet, scurrying back down where he had come from and hurrying to his destination. Oh, things were so much easier on his Management rail! He was just about to enter it, when GLaDOS stopped him once again. "No! Don't go in there either! Just, stop."

"Oh, come on! Where do you want me to go? Are you trying to confuse me? Is that it? You know, I think something _may_ be wrong, 'cause you're just acting _weird._" Straight after saying it, he gasped and his eyes widened and his hands flew to his mouth. "Oh, god, oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god! I said it without stammering!"

"Yes, it seems you have. Now back away slowly and head back to the Repair Chamber, or I _will blow you up."_

Not wanting to protest, no matter how strange he thought it was, Wheatley slowly turned and trudged back to the Repair Chamber. When nearing the Repair Chamber, however, he was greeted with another surprise. "Stop!"

"Oh, for god's sake! This is getting bang out of order! It's like you're trying to drive me insane, and I've been insane before and it wasn't a nice experience, so I don't want to be insane again, no way, thank you very much."

"Turn around, and head back to the Test Chamber entrance."

Wheatley froze. "You don't want me to do testing, do you? I can't test, please don't make me test, I don't want to test, I won't do it!"

"I don't want you to test; I don't want you to turn that corner, and I want you to turn around and go anywhere but there."

Wheatley grumbled something unorthodox under his breath and left, his fists clenched. It was getting tiring now, and he was fed up. His footsteps echoed even louder now, his every move expressing anger and annoyance. He marched to the lift which would take one down to the Testing part of the facility, stopping in front of it and peering round. He waited, waited for GLaDOS to say something, even called out her name a couple of times, but nothing replied.

It was only when he heard her distant voice and the stomping of feet, when he tensed and the mechanics in his face that were the equivalent of a human's facial muscles formed into a display of the emotion surprise and fear. He backed away slightly, the footsteps growing louder and GLaDOS's voice more urgent. She was talking to someone, someone Wheatley couldn't hear, and the way she spoke made Wheatley realise she didn't think he could hear. He couldn't, not what she was saying anyway, but something told him to panic and run back to the Repair Chamber to recharge for the night, pretending he had never seen anything.

But something held him frozen to the spot, because if he tried to run his clumsy footing would get him in a muddle and he didn't have enough time before whoever was coming came into sight. He closed his eyes shut and concentrated hard, trying to forget the world outside, because if what he thought was happening was happening, he didn't want it to. He wanted to shut out the rest of the world and climb back into his sphere body, and he wanted the safety of the Management Rail, anything but this.

Then there was a gasp and his quiet, inaudible murmuring was halted as he squeezed open an eye to catch a glimpse of what, who, was before him.

He really wished he hadn't.

Up in space, he had a whole speech built, a whole monologue of all the horrible, guilty feelings he had ever experienced in that dreadful place. He had 181 days to think about it anyway, yet all the things he would have said had he been given the choice seemed to fly out of his mind and he was rendered speechless. Because he didn't feel like he thought he would.

He didn't feel guilty, or sorry. He felt _mad. _All the feelings that had flooded him during his insanity came back, and he suddenly realised why he had done it. Only when the reality that he was stuck in space and the fact she was truly gone made him feel sorry, but now he was presented with her time seemed to stop and the wave of emotions that had struck him that first breath of ultimate power came flooding back. He remembered it all. Every single thing.

With this sudden break of emotion he didn't register GLaDOS's sudden silence and the quiet, _"Oh no," _that left her Voice Modulator, but instead he widened his eyes and clenched his fists so hard the skin covering them turned white from being stretched. Before him, in all her bedraggled, scruffy glory, was the one person he didn't want to see.

Her eyes widened momentarily in surprise, and Wheatley braced himself, but nothing came. Then he realised; she wouldn't recognise him. He was in an entirely different body, and to her he would just look like a dishevelled, unkempt man with scraggly, reddish hair that stuck out in all directions and bright, cerulean blue eyes slightly too fluorescent to be real if you looked closely. And he would do anything so she kept thinking that, that she never found out who he really was, because he didn't want to know what she would do if she found out.

But Wheatley didn't want to say sorry. Instead, he wanted to do what he wanted to do when he was first put in the DOS system, all the anger and hurt that had overcome him when presented with such power overcoming him again. Because it was as if he had suddenly realised the reason he had felt all those things, all those terrible, terrible things. He wanted to crush her like a bug under a mashy-spike-plate and watch her suffer, just like he had done 211 days ago.

But he was no longer in a body as powerful, and while these thoughts were swimming through his Thought Processor, he didn't notice when the woman before him marched upwards and give him a mighty slap, right across his robotic cheek.

Turns out GLaDOS had also given him the ability to feel pain, as well as to touch. Immense pain.

He stumbled back slightly from shock, rubbing the offended cheek with his hands. His vision became a little blurry and unfocused, but he could just make out Chell clutching the hand she had slapped him with and looking like she was in pain. "I wouldn't slap him too hard you know. Underneath his skin, he has solid metal panelling that is strong enough to break your hand if you punch him," GLaDOS said, guessing that Chell had worked out who he was and there was no point in hiding it.

Wheatley pulled his hand away from his cheek once the pain subsided a little and stared at Chell, who was glaring at him. It was as if all the guilt had flown out of him. He had enjoyed his short time in the DOS system, and he certainly hadn't enjoyed feeling guilty in space. Why had he felt guilty? She was the one who had abandoned him, watched as _he_ gave up everything just for her escape, then ripped such a god-like power from him, and _he_ was supposed to be guilty?

He narrowed his eyes and tried to look as intimidating as possible, but didn't want to say anything. Turns out he didn't need to, because despite GLaDOS's warnings, Chell took another swing at his face, hitting an eye with her fist. Wheatley yelped and cried out as he lost all vision in his right eye, the optic smashing and collapsing in it's socket.

Chell pulled back, her eyes wide and her hands on her mouth. "Oh. Look what you've done. That's going to take weeks to repair," GLaDOS stated dryly. Wheatley groaned slightly, covering the right side of his face and trying to ignore the stabbing pain inside his head, like someone was ripping all his wires out and plugging them back in the wrong places. His Though Processor must have been broken, because he couldn't think straight and all the hardware in his head seemed to be malfunctioning and fizzing up. He looked at Chell weakly through his left eye, the only one still intact, and saw the anger burn bright in her eyes. Her fists were clenched, and she looked so dangerously furious it made Wheatley's circuits boil.

After a moment's silence, Wheatley growled and lunged forwards, swiping at Chell's delicate face. She dodged out of the way in the nick of time, Wheatley's hand missing her face by mere millimetres. Chell was confused, because although she hated him with all her guts, she wondered why he wasn't instantly sorry, like he appeared to be when she had accidently let him go, and the pain in his voice when had flown into the distance, millions of miles away from Earth. Now, it seemed he was just as angry as she was and not only that, he was in an android body that looked almost entirely human on the outside. She could only guess who he was from GLaDOS's 'Oh no,' and the unmistakable colour of his eyes.

But now he was trying to hurt her, trying to slap her face like she had done his. At least he deserved it. She lifted her hand in defence and raised her other one in a position to strike, but before she could touch him or vice versa, a robotic arm had come out from the wall and was dragging her into the other side of the metal walkway. She writhed and struggled but GLaDOS had a grip of steel, (literally) and Chell was useless, as was Wheatley on the other side of the wall.

"I expected as much," GLaDOS said over the loudspeaker as Chell and Wheatley pointlessly struggled to break free and inflict harm on each other. "Unless I do something, you two will manage to blow the place up again, after all the repairs I have done. I am going to put you in the Relaxation Chamber and you in the Repair Chamber, and once I have fixed your eye, you two are going to test, as it's the only thing that will stop you fighting like children. Fail to do this, and I will blow you _both_ up, and I suspect Chell is very difficult to repair."

Chell growled something under her breath and glowered over at Wheatley on the other side of the wall, who glowered back with as much hatred.

He did not want forgiveness from this woman. And she did not want to forgive him.


	4. Chapter 4

"Wait-" Wheatley blurted, holding his hand out in a sort of, 'halt' gesture. Chell looked around uncertainly at her feet, trying to see what was there. "Don't move- just stay _right _there..." He said, lifting his Handheld Portal Device and aiming it at Chell's feet. Placing her hands on her hip, she sighed and looked upwards. Up on the test chamber ceiling, as she had expected, was Wheatley's other portal, just waiting for her above a large pool of dangerous, toxic waste. Chell sighed again and side-stepped just in time before Wheatley shot the opposite portal directly where her feet had previously been.

He groaned, and threw his hands up. "Don't move! If you could just, ah, take about a step backwards, that would be great thanks, luv!" Chell looked at him, raising her eyebrows in an '_are you serious?' _way. Wheatley nodded in the direction of the portal, as if urging her to say, 'Oh, alright then!' and jump willingly to her death. "Come on! Just a step backwards, nothing's gonna happen. Just jump into that portal there, 'kay?"

She would have said something, but she had decided to not speak to Wheatley, _ever, _so he would continue thinking she was a mute until she could get out of this place. Before, she had been perfectly happy to pass the time testing with GLaDOS, her 'best friend' who didn't in fact want to kill her. But now, she was being forced to test just to restrain her from _blowing_ the place up! Not only that, testing with someone who's _far _more likely to be blowing things up than she would ever be, who also has a desire to kill her. So she didn't say anything.

Looking from Wheatley's hopeful face to the death portal next to her feet, Chell rolled her eyes and shot a portal next to Wheatley's on the ceiling and one beneath Wheatley's feet, leaving him no time to even shoot her a confused look before she was watching him fall from the ceiling feet-first with a terrified look on his face as he landed in the horrible liquid with a satisfying _plop! _"Oh. Great. That's the fifth time you've killed him. I guess you can now head back to the single Test Chambers while I rebuild your partner, from _scratch,_" GLaDOS said dryly.

Chell didn't seem to mind as a lift came down from the ceiling that would transport her away from the Cooperative Test Chambers and into the single. "You've killed him so many times it's almost as if you _enjoy_ giving me an extra work-load. I've rebuilt that android so many times, I could do it with my eyes closed."

Chell looked around from her place in the slowly ascending lift, enjoying seeing the Chamber from such a height. "That is, if I had any eyes," GLaDOS continued. "In fact, I can almost complete rebuilding the body within a week."

Then GLaDOS's voice was cut off as Chell was now out of view from the Test Chamber, the world outside the lift gone black. Chell shut her eyes as she slumped down onto the floor of the lift, a singular peaceful moment in the wait, outlined against all the experiences she had had since Wheatley came back. Here, by herself, she could shut out the world and concentrate on her thoughts.

She could no longer wait for herself to fully recover. Now that Wheatley was going to be staying in Aperture permanently, as in no going back to space, she would do anything to get out of this place. Every time she looked into those bright, blue eyes her mind was transported to when he was the slightly annoying at times, yet excitable, friendly robot who had escorted her throughout the facility when everything else was dangerous. He had been like a single flame in an endless night.

But then he had betrayed her, and every time she looked at him his voice, his once so welcoming voice, would ring through her ears. _Who's the boss? Who's the boss? It's _me.

It was almost too much to bear. She knew that Wheatley was no longer in control of the facility, and the damage he could inflict on her was very minor compared to the ability he had when in the DOS system. But although he was so polite every time he happily asked her to oblige while he sent her to her death, she knew that that was just him and on the inside, he was as angry as she was, did not want to say sorry, and would quite happily watch her die. Even better if he was the cause of her death.

So, he was no longer evil in the way he acted, but his actions and intentions still were. He wanted to destroy her like he did when in complete control of the facility, no matter how sorry he had seemed when she let him go. And to anybody else, the way he acted would just seem like he was a nice, friendly guy. Chell knew better than they did. She knew that Wheatley could be just as evil when acting evil as he could be when he appeared to be acting nice.

It was scary how much he had changed. She still remembered him as a Core, a round white sphere with a bright, blue optic that would still be alive and lit up no matter how broken, battered and grubby he would be. Now, he was a tall, scraggly android with wiry, strawberry-blonde hair and eyes too bright to belong to a normal human. Despite GLaDOS's inability to create something imperfect, give it to Wheatley and it would soon lose all signs of perfection. Personality-wise, he still acted like he did when they first knew each other, but never around her, yet his intentions were as wicked as when he was evil.

She would do anything to be back on the surface now, Combine or not, just to be out of the facility. She desperately wished she would hurry up and get better, because she wasn't even allowed freedom here anymore. When not testing, she was confined to the Relaxation Chamber to stay out of the way from Wheatley, and they were never allowed to see each other unless it was testing. Chell scoffed at the thought. Like they'd want to see each other anyway.

But what Chell couldn't understand, was why GLaDOS kept repairing him. She had told Chell that ATLAS and P-Body had been sent to collect him when she had no-one to talk to, but had regretted it when Chell had miraculously turned up. So Chell had first thought that she was doing GLaDOS a favour when she killed Wheatley the first time, but it turns out GLaDOS wanted to keep him, by rebuilding him every time Chell 'murdered' him. Chell wasn't surprised to find that GLaDOS didn't seem to mind Chell being a murderer, as long as it wasn't her being murdered.

Chell just wanted it to be over. She had enjoyed her return to Aperture, but after _he _returned, Chell frantically wanted to go back to normal life on the surface and forget everything to do with Aperture. She wanted to be able to forget it and live like every other average person. But after coming back, the memories would be fresh for another couple of years and it would take a while for Chell to move on. Maybe she should join the Combine Resistance group after all. It would take her mind off things, and they could do with an experienced fighter like her. Plus, Black Mesa would probably be a great deal better when it comes to company, as the tests that went on it their place seemed a lot more diplomatic than it did in Aperture. Honestly, at least Black Mesa did actual science! Aperture were the ones who _stole _the idea for a Gravity Gun and stuck it on the end of their own Handheld Portal Device, the ones who invented homicidal AI to do their work for them and make bucket loads of money in the process, the ones who _stole people off park benches _and _forced _them to do tests! What was scientific about seeing what a homeless person would do when presented with an incredibly valuable device, a big red button and a cube? Nothing! That's what!

And then they did things like injecting innocent people with highly dangerous mantis DNA just to see what would happen, without any research or thought about the risks and consequences, and Chell almost thought they deserved to be killed with neurotoxin. At least Black Mesa didn't do ridiculous tests on _real people. _It served Aperture right that they had a bunch of mantis men running aground the facility.

Chell snapped her eyes shut tighter and buried her face in her knees, glad that there were no cameras in the lift for anyone to see her with. She didn't like it here anymore. She wanted to go _home. _She wanted to go back to City 17 and see real people with organic insides, and to see the wind moving without anything being controlled. She wanted, no, _needed _something natural. She hugged her knees tightly to her chest and tried to focus on the happy thought of Wheatley falling through the ceiling and landing in the waste, slowly disintegrating. Even though she would probably see him in a week or so, at least it's a week or so without him. She had thought about killing him every time he was rebuilt so that she could heal without him being there, and maybe even get to leave before he gets complete.

But she knew that killing him straight after he was fixed every time wouldn't please GLaDOS greatly, and Chell might find herself falling into that toxic waste next time. GLaDOS needed Wheatley for company after Chell had gone, because Chell didn't want to think about how hard it must be to teach ATLAS and P-Body to speak. Besides, after Chell had gone GLaDOS would probably work Wheatley loopy by the end of a month. And Chell took pleasure in the fact that Wheatley would _not _be leading a life of luxury after she had gone, or maybe even a life at all if GLaDOS grew sick of him, because there was a lot of work to be done on the facility and GLaDOS couldn't do it all. Chell wouldn't be able to do it, because she was recovering and only had enough energy daily to test. Manual labour was not going to heal her in a hurry.

The lift had risen now, and Chell was pulled out of her thoughts and to the Test Chamber she was currently standing in, a complicated one GLaDOS had spent a lot of time thinking about while Chell was in the left. Pulling on a determined expression, Chell stepped forwards and started completing the test.

By the end of the day, Chell had successfully completed 21 tests. It hadn't quite beaten her record, 23, but it was close enough and Chell was tired. She had sat down on her double bed and collapsed, kicking off her long-fall boots and pulling herself under her covers, not touching the food that GLaDOS had left on her desk. Chell was a human, and needed food, so GLaDOS supplied her with the regular three meals a day. Although Chell never dared to ask her where the food came from, from fear of being put off it and dying slowly of starvation down there.

Slowly, while Wheatley was being repaired again, Chell began to heal faster and faster until she nearing the time when she would have to leave. Well, it says 'have to,' but Chell would do it entirely willingly now.

It was only when Wheatley came back, good as new, that her routine was broken and, coincidentally, the recovering slowed down a great deal.

"You ready, luv?" he called from the other side of the chamber, her eyes just making out the hand cupped around his mouth to project his voice. Not wanting to respond, Chell went ahead anyway and stepped onto the catapult, soaring gracefully through the air until her escapade was ruined when she crashed into Wheatley halfway. "Aaargghhh!" he cried, flailing his limbs as he fell down into the incinerator below them, glaring at Chell before he landed as she fell through a portal on a moving platform that led back onto the safety of the side. Everything had been timed perfectly, and her plan had succeeded.

She smiled slightly to herself when there was a scream, followed by a _crunch _and the sickening sound of metal scraping against metal. "I know he tried and nearly succeeded in killing you five times in the past week he's been back, but that was completely unnecessary," GLaDOS said after a tiny _blip _announced her about to speak. "Now you have to wait another week before you can test cooperatively again, and the reparation of the whole facility will be slowed down. _Again. _I hope you're happy._"_

There was a hiss and a bang, before a smouldering piece if debris that looked suspiciously like a knee flew out of the incinerator, landing with a clang at Chell's feet. There were even the remnants of what used to be a white material stuck to it, smoking and tattered. Chell glanced at it distastefully; she was never usually one to speak unless it was necessary, but this situation called for something.

"Oops."

{O}

Now, it was just getting repetitive. Every single time, it was the same thing, and GLaDOS found herself wishing Chell would hurry up and heal as well. It was quite amusing at first – by that, she means the first time, but after that it got out of hand and GLaDOS was getting tired of it. She couldn't blame them though; she would probably try to repeatedly kill someone if they did that to her. But no-one had done that to her, not recently, anyway, and when it was someone else, she wasn't interested. It just generated more work for her, and the same task every other week was tedious.

They'd attempt to kill each other all day long when testing, and she was beginning to think she'd never see the end of it. Chell would kill him sometimes. Wheatley would almost kill her others. But to be honest, GLaDOS was glad Chell found it easier to not get killed than Wheatley. Because unlike the android, Chell could not be repaired in a week, or any amount of time really, and if she fell into that toxic-waste or the incinerator, or got shot by a turret, she would not be coming back. And despite belief, GLaDOS did not want Chell to die. Not anymore, anyway.

But now she had nothing to do, GLaDOS spent her days watching them test, and although it was what she was programmed to do and she _should _never grow bored of it, (unless she started going corrupt...) it got a little repetitive when the amount of tests they completed began to decrease slightly every day due to their growing determination to kill each other. So then she switched to her other cooperative testing pair, ATLAS and P-Body, who were now back in the android bodies to test if they worked okay or not. Even they didn't try to kill each other as much as Chell and Wheatley did.

Eventually, she got so bored she decided to watch some of the videos the tracker she had placed on ATLAS and P-Body had caught, just to see what they had gotten up to while collecting Wheatley. She probably wouldn't like it, but hey, anything to keep her mind off the endless testing.

Taking control of the hardware stored in the DOS system, she delved into it and searched the database which held the filming of their 'adventures'. The camera was embedded in P-Body's right optic, so as to not arouse suspicion. GLaDOS suspected that having a massive camera strapped to your forehead isn't considered normal among humans, though from what Chell told her about the current status of the world thanks to the Combine, GLaDOS expected to be surprised. The world sounded so different than from what GLaDOS remembered the scientists had talked about. It was severe, and everyone had to wear a strict uniform. Apparently people went from living in houses to living in small, clammy apartments, and even the apartments were bare, worn down and cheap, with boarded up windows and scruffy decorating. The world sounded utterly uninteresting, and GLaDOS didn't understand why Chell wanted to go back so much. Although, GLaDOS had to give it to Black Mesa that she had to respect them now they're trying so hard to save the world. It's more than Aperture ever would have done. Aperture would have cowered away and locked themselves down in the facility, spinelessly hiding while someone else does the work. All Aperture members were cowards. Except Chell, of course.

Pressing 'Play' on the video, GLaDOS watched as the camera feed started when ATLAS and P-Body were making their way over to the lift. She could see herself, staring back at them as they marched bravely to the outside world. The camera bounced up and down from P-Body's proud strides, and every so often it went black for a split-second when she blinked, (the optics need cleaning from the air and dust, just like humans.) The rest of that bit was boring, as it was just them walking through the wheat fields and stopping every time they saw something interesting, which was every other second. Every time the wind blew the wheat they'd stop and point, giggling. At one point, ATLAS pounced into P-Body's arms, trembling, as he pointed to something GLaDOS couldn't see on a wheat stalk. When P-Body had zoomed in closer to inspect it, GLaDOS almost died of annoyance when she saw that it was a ladybird. The next ten minutes of video was them recovering from the shock of finding out that the ladybird was not, in fact, hostile. Then they found it cute, cooing it and stroking it gently with fingers, until ATLAS squashed it and they moved on, disappointed.

GLaDOS was feeling sick at this point, as sick as robots were able to feel, anyway, and quickly fast-forwarded it to find something interesting. Nothing, nothing, nothing- ah! This looks good. GLaDOS re-winded it a bit before playing it, the video starting as they were walking through the streets. They generally looked how Chell had described them; bare, grotty and miserable. A few Combine soldiers shot ATLAS and P-Body suspicious looks, but to GLaDOS's relief they did nothing. ATLAS and P-Body didn't notice, however, and continued dancing merrily along as if they had years to complete the task. Every time they saw a notice-board they'd stare at it closely, trying to make it out, but never succeeded. GLaDOS was just about to move on, bored, when through the Sound System she heard distant singing in the background of the video.

Turns out ATLAS and P-Body heard the singing as well, and the camera feed GLaDOS was watching suddenly started moving a lot quicker as P-Body broke off into a run, ATLAS ahead. GLaDOS watched interestedly, the sound of the singing getting louder.

Then, they turned a corner around a large, rundown hotel and found the source of the singing. In a small, barren clearing that had obviously just been emptied thanks to the large pile of junk stuffed away in a corner, were a bunch of people, singing a slow, boring hymn. At the front of the people were two other humans; a man, and a woman who was dressed in white, staring at each other with ridiculous, goofy smiles on their faces as the rest of the well-dressed people sang. GLaDOS found it utterly revolting.

ATLAS and P-Body didn't though, and stopped to watch the make-shift ceremony which was as close to a wedding as people could get with the Combine hanging about. After listening to the singing for a while, the camera turned to see ATLAS with a goofy grin plastered on his face. GLaDOS wanted to scream, 'GET ON WITH IT!' but knew that it would be pointless and didn't want to confuse Chell and Wheatley. She sat, watching the screen and silently pleading ATLAS and P-Body to get a move on.

Oh, how she _really _wished they had done now. Towards the end of the song, the bride and groom took each other's hands and leaned forwards, eyes closed. The camera started jigging up and down. The weather also took this convenient moment to rain, and GLaDOS started having a panic-attack. _Get under some shelter! _Thankfully, ATLAS and P-Body seemed to have the same idea and started frantically looking about for some shelter as the first few raindrops started to fall. Unfortunately, there was none, and the only thing they could find available was the wedding shelter the bride and groom were smooching under. Clutching his hair as if it would shelter him from the falling water, ATLAS darted ahead through the clapping crowd, P-Body at his heels. A few of the wedding guests stepped back, affronted.

Just before the bride and groom's lips met, ATLAS barged through them, surprising them as he and P-Body struggled to squeeze under the shelter. GLaDOS mentally slapped her non-existent forehead at their stupidity. It was almost embarrassing. On screen, the bride squealed and ran away, picking up her skirts. The groom called after her, but it was too late; the bride had stepped on a rake which hit her forehead, knocking her out in the process. There was a sharp intake of breath from every member of the crowd, and a panicked 'Chantelle!' cried from the groom. While ATLAS and P-Body stood sheltered from the rain, confused, the wedding guests started crowding round the fallen bride.

The groom, seeing that his partner was being taken care of, turned to ATLAS, anger burning brightly all over his face. _Oh no... _GLaDOS thought. Then, as she expected, the groom raised his hand, curled into a fist, and swung it at ATLAS's face. There was a crunch as his fist collided with ATLAS and the groom recoiled, gasping in pain as he clutched his hand. GLaDOS was getting close to the forehead slapping stage at this point. She could only watch as the events before her unfolded onscreen.

After ATLAS collapsed to the floor, dazzled, P-Body marched forwards and punched the already-in-pain groom, right across his cheek. His eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed, eyes shut. The wedding crowd gasped again. The rain stopped pouring. After P-Body had helped ATLAS up and the crowd were gathered together in a massive clump, murmuring between themselves, a large black vehicle with a gun on the front drove into sight. A bunch of men in black carrying dangerous-looking weapons appeared, jumping off and menacingly spreading out amongst the crowds. All the wedding guests trembled and their murmurings were silent. When seeing the injured bride and groom, the Combine gathered them up and carelessly chucked them onto the van, not caring about the unconscious humans as they tossed them away as if they were ragdolls. ATLAS stood up and came to P-Body's side, quivering in fear. The Combine soldiers moved around a bit, searching for anything out of the ordinary, before one's gaze fell on ATLAS and P-Body and he muttered something into a walkie-talkie. Then he raised his weapon which crackled with blue electricity and came over to ATLAS and P-Body who were huddled together, nervous and frightened.

When they didn't move, the Combine soldier raised his fist and aimed a swing at P-Body, but she held up her arm in defence, not thinking it would work and was surprised to see that she had accidently knocked him out. GLaDOS was beginning to wonder how they even got this far at all, at this rate. ATLAS shakily bent down and picked up the gun from the soldiers belt, staring at it strangely as if it was completely foreign to him, which it was. Then he held it by the barrel, trying to look intimidating as he held it up the wrong way, pointing it at everybody. Then he accidently pulled the trigger and shot a hole in the floor, causing ten Combine heads to look up and see what the noise was for. ATLAS froze in shock, clutching the gun in a hand, before he lost his grip and the gun slipped out of his hands, flying though the air.

He made an attempt to grab it, as did everybody else, but P-Body reached it first and seized it. Unfortunately, when she caught it, her finger wrapped around the trigger and she tripped on the stairs, pulling off a shot as her face collided with the muddy ground. All GLaDOS could see on the camera was soil, but she could hear the distant sound of something burning and desperately urged P-Body to pull herself to her feet. When she did, she was greeted with the sight of something burning, and GLaDOS realised with a shock that P-Body had accidently shot one of the flammable barrels that were lying about these days.

The camera froze momentarily as the flames that had swallowed the barrel caught on another, before P-Body scrambled up to where ATLAS was standing and dragged him out of way by the wrist. They managed to scamper round the corner and curl into a ball just as the deafening boom was heard and the camera went blank as P-Body shut her eyes.

GLaDOS stared in anticipation as the sound went dead and the camera feed didn't move for a long time. When it finally did, she found herself disappointed that P-Body was, in fact, alive, even though GLaDOS already knew that she was. The camera shifted as the sound of fire crackling was in the air and P-Body's optic scrambled back into focus. Once the smoke that lingered had drifted away slightly, GLaDOS had almost died of exasperation by the time she saw what P-Body had been looking at.

The wedding guests, who were now not so well-dressed, were blackened and sooty and their hair was singed and smoking, their clothes tattered and smouldering. All glared at ATLAS and P-Body as they walked on past sheepishly, the Combine no-where in sight. The horrible looks on everyone's faces made ATLAS and P-Body hurry on faster, scampering out of sight before the situation got any more chaotic.

At this point, GLaDOS had seen enough and switched the screen off, unable to bear seeing anymore of ATLAS and P-Body's idiocy. She sighed to herself and wondered how on earth they had managed to get back at all, let alone in one piece, two months before they needed to be, and with the task complete. All the odds were against them, and the video she had watched was proof that they had probably done many more stupid things, many probably even more stupid. But they had somehow managed it, despite their foolishness.

Then the door to the chamber zipped open, and in came none other than ATLAS and P-Body, back in their old bodies, chatting robotically too each other, their voices none other than electrical currents that only made sense to them. They stopped in front of GLaDOS, who was staring at them while trying to piece together what she had just witnessed. They looked at each other, shrugged, before high-fiving triumphantly with their free hands and turning to GLaDOS, expecting some sort of reward for completing their tests.

Drifting back to the present and trying to forget the video she had just seen of their 'mishap' in a human city, GLaDOS said, "I guess I should say well done. Now calm down and stop acting like idiots. Wait- you are idiots. Oh well. I need to have a word with you."

{O}

Wheatley was getting tired of dying. Well, not _dying, _being _killed _is probably a better way to put it. It was just so unfair! Every time he tried to kill her, he failed, but she succeeded _every_ time she tried to kill him! He had lost count of the times he had woken in the Repair Chamber, a new body and a new Portal Device, GLaDOS's face on the screen telling him had been killed and instructing him to head back to the test chamber with Chell.

Oh, Chell. How much he despised her. He meant every word he had said to her, every single word. Because he had believed it. He believes it now, as well, after spending half a year in space thinking he didn't, but now he knew. He knew the feelings he had felt in the DOS system, because despite what Chell though, he had betrayed her for a reason. No, she had betrayed _him. _He had been so hurt.

So, unbelievably hurt.

When he had retrieved the lift for her, he had felt happier than he had for a long time. He had done something good for someone, him, little Wheatley, had done something helpful, and had done very well at it, he might add. He had been so content when he had seen the smile plastered on her face as she ascended upwards, knowing that he was the cause for that smile. He expected her to wave, or smile at him, or _something, _but she never did. After being looked down upon his entire 'life', no-one would be able to even imagine how brilliant it was to have someone listen to you.

And then to see her leave, so happily, without saying goodbye or thank you as much as he could without voice, to see her make her way upwards thanks to Wheatley without even a second glance, that made something snapped in him that day.

Something had snapped.

It was as if she had crawled inside and started ripping his wires apart and snapping his circuits, and _he _was the one who felt betrayed. She had wanted him to die, detested his insufferable annoyance all the way through and only putting up with him because he was her ticket to freedom, _purposely _letting him fall when he had asked her to catch him. She hadn't cared. He was just a robot who was like GLaDOS, no feelings or purpose or emotion, and he wouldn't feel pain when he abandoned her. He had made sure to teach her that he _could _feel pain, and that he had never felt as much emotional pain than when she had left him.

And then he had realised: wait, why am I just sitting here, letting her hurt me like this? Letting GLaDOS mock me like this? He had the power to do something, to prove that he wasn't a moron, and it would have been stupid to waste it. So, having a mental battle then and there, he had brought the lift down, the feeling of complete power and control suddenly dawning on him. Part of him was urging, begging, _pleading _him to send the lift back up and have the brilliant feeling of seeing her smile once again, but after GLaDOS called him a moron again, he had had enough. And then everything fell into place. It all felt so _right, _and as much as he hadn't planned to kill her, he couldn't stop.

But now he would never see that smile again, not for him, anyway. It was almost painful to think about that, but it was focus-clouding so he pushed it to the back of his mind and concentrated on killing Chell. He never succeeded, but to keep trying after what she did to him would help keep his spirits up in the short periods he was alive. He almost found himself looking forward to the day she would leave, but part of him would miss her company. Wheatley knew that once he no longer needed to test to keep the facility from blowing up, GLaDOS would work him hard. Very hard.

Still, part of him was still sorry, as now he was no longer in control of the facility his actions didn't seem as just as they did back then. And on a scale, his wrongs would be a lot heavier than hers. But that definitely wasn't the dominant part. No, in fact it hardly existed, and was such a tiny part it was barely there.

Wheatley had these thoughts while in the Repair Chamber one night, the rest of the facility silent around him and the only sound the quiet beeping and whirring of the machines around him. He was sat on one of those spinning-office chair things, his hands folded over his lap and his legs subconsciously twirling the chair in soothing circles. The dark room span round in front of his eyes, but he wasn't programmed to get dizzy and he wasn't concentrating on his surroundings anyway. He was trying and failing to gather his thoughts, because the previous days had been emotionally stressing and it was just starting to dawn on him that Chell was leaving tomorrow.

He wasn't quite sure what he felt about that. But he needed to decide on a conclusion soon, because the day was nearing every second and he was beginning to stress. Now, every time he looked at her his mind was whisked back to the look on her face as she clutched dearly onto his rails, not wanting to let him go, flying off into space. He remembered the total bliss he had felt, mixed in with the impending doom of living in space for the rest of his life. The total bliss he had felt when he realised she wanted to hold on, and didn't want to let go. She wanted him to _stay._

But still, it was nothing compared to the pain she put him through. He would never be able to forgive her, and didn't plan to. She was leaving tomorrow and then he'd never have to see her again, never have to be reminded that she _had_ wanted him to stay. He kept trying to persuade himself that she had let him go on purpose, that she tried to damn him to an endless eternity of nothingness.

Wheatley sighed, and picked himself up from the still-spinning chair. The night was thick and he needed his charge, so he needed to get some 'sleep.' Sitting back down on the floor that was his bed, he took the wire from the wall and plugged it into the back of his neck, leaving no room for more thought.

The next day, Wheatley was awoken by a beeping red button flashing in the corner of his vision, alerting him that his battery was full. The timed lights had switched on, letting him know that it was past 8:00am. He flexed his fingers, feeling the life seep back into him. It was his equivalent of stretching. After sitting still for a couple of minutes, he pulled himself to his feet and sat back down on the spinny-chair, waiting for GLaDOS to allow him out. Although he wouldn't be testing today; today was the day Chell left.

He didn't have time to think now. He didn't want to think. He wanted to sit here and think about nothing else for once, instead. He would have stayed there forever, but GLaDOS had other plans as the door opened and she was announced by a tiny _bleep. _"Good morning. Well, as close to morning as it gets underground," she greeted. "If you want to say goodbye, you can come up. If not, stay down here until I'm sure there's no chance of you blowing something up."

Then the blip announced her departure and Wheatley was left by himself again, the open door beckoning him. He pondered on the decision available to him, and tried to decide on an answer. Should he say goodbye? Well, he certainly didn't want her to have a 'good' bye. He still hated her as much as he did when in the DOS system. Still, he felt a tiny pang of guilt when the doors closed that Chell would have no-one seeing her off other than GLaDOS. Then again, it would be more of a fist-fight than a send off, but oh well. Wheatley could stay down here anyway.

Later on, when he heard GLaDOS's voice again, did it fully hit him she was gone. "Well, that was eventful. At least now there's the minimum damage you can inflict on the facility. Now get up and help. This facility isn't going to repair itself after you nearly destroyed it."

Wheatley sighed and pulled himself up to his feet, walking out the door with only a hint of regret. He would be able to think on things later. But Chell was gone, and whether he hated her or not, she would not be coming back.

**A/N. Hello! I'm really glad about the time I completed this. Anyway, this is not the last chapter! Far from, actually. I've still got miles more to do, so keep in touch! Please tell me what you think. Chell will be back; do not worry. Anyway, tell me what you thought, and, well, yeah! Whatever. :)**

**Disclaimer: All copyrights belong to Valve, not me.**

**Review!**

**~Franki**


	5. Chapter 5

Chell ducked as another missile hurtled past, retreating as far back as the metal debris she was hiding under would allow. It soared past with a trail of smoke in its path, leaving the remnants of its terrifyingly loud _hiss _behind. The air was still filled with the horrible sounds trailing off, echoing around the place and causing people to cover their ears. Chell took a deep breath and charged out into the open, crouching as low as she would allow yet still being able to run fast. Gunshots and screams filled the air, and in the distance one could hear the orders of both sides being barked at soldiers.

The air was rigid, as if it had just been insulted by the offending rocket launchers, and the happenings of the rest of the world seemed like distant memories swirling around at the bottom of a very deep, very murky lake. Chell grimaced at the acrid, pungent smell that hung in the air like a mist, choking the air out of people and burning the inside of their nostrils. Great. So Chell had gone to the one place she had never wanted to go back to just to be healed of her lungs, only to come back and find the world swallowed in a toxic, bitter atmosphere from the oil and sulphur from the raging war that had grown a great deal in her absence. Something had happened between humans and the Combine, probably involving the Resistance Group, and now the war had gotten serious. Chell had arrived back with clean, fresh lungs only to have them blackened again by the sour, acidic air.

Chell coughed against the smoke again and darted under a fallen ceiling, the dust and the rubble floating in the air, outlined against the light seeping in through the cracks in the wreckage. Here, she could shelter, but only for a while. With the Combine filling up the City like water filling a bowl, you could never stay in one place too long before they found you. She shivered despite the intense heat and pulled her plain, blue jacket tighter that was part of the strict uniform around her. Tucking a stray strand of hair gingerly behind her ear, she leaned forwards as best she could in her crouching position and stared out between the rubble. The sun was beginning to set, painting the city in gold and casting dark, lurking shadows on the dusty ground.

After the sound around her grew quieter, Chell decided it was time to move on again and crept out of the latest pile of fragments and remains. Ducking a low ceiling, Chell clambered over the pile and skidded down the other side leaving a cloud of dust in her wake. The air was thin here, and the shadows even darker. Wildflowers struggled to squeeze up through cracks in the dry, barren earth, the amount of oil and wreckage not helping. She squeezed through another crack under some corrugated tin, huffing and gasping with every movement. The sharp edges snagged at her clothes and pulled at her hair, like hands pulling her back. She pulled on a determined face and carried on shuffling through on her stomach like a worm, snaking her way to freedom.

Now out in the open again, she quickly had to retreat back when upon sight of one of the Combine gunships sailed past, shooting lightning-fast bullets at something in the distance Chell couldn't see. Hiding in the shelter of the tin, she waited until the Gunship was out of sight before venturing back into the open. After a thorough check that the coast was clear, Chell scuttled out and ran off, staying low. Scrunching up her eyes from the dust, she crawled into an old, abandoned shack and sat herself down in the corner, making sure to stay as low as possible.

Sighing and relaxing for the first time that day, she closed her eyes and let the breath gush back down into her lungs. Letting her senses down for this one moment she was completely out of sight, she practically jumped out of her skin when there was a horrible, gut-wrenching _thud _followed by the rustling of something. She clutched her knees tighter at the sudden noise, widening her eyes and trying to keep absolutely still and silent. There was no sound for another few seconds, and Chell was almost about to let go the breath she had been holding, when there was another thud and something fell off the top of the crate, rolling along the floor and landing next to her feet. Chell froze; she was expecting someone hostile to then jump up from behind the crater, and knew that she was probably in great danger, but she definitely didn't expect it to be what it was.

There was another rustling, and something else rolled off the top of the crate, before the loud, incredibly loud, sound of someone pushing the crate along the floor was heard and the crate had shuffled out of the way. The source of the noise was revealed to Chell. A man was sat there, wearing one of the blue uniforms, a gun clutched in his hand. Relief rippled across his face when he saw Chell, and he lowered his gun and pressed a finger to his lips. She nodded, only just containing the amount of joy that washed through her at the sight of another person who wasn't running around screaming with their hands behind their heads.

The man made a patting motion with his hand, silently motioning for her to stay low, and she nodded, hunching her back over further. He stood up wearily; she watched with interest as he crept towards the window and, peering out with the gun cocked in his hand, narrowed his eyes in concentration and shot a single bullet. A single 'aaargghhh!' filled the air as the man quickly withdrew his hand, a smirk plastered on his face as he re-loaded the gun. Swiftly shooting another one into the sky, he nodded at her and shuffled across to the door, beckoning her to follow.

Now placing her trust in this man, Chell took his lead and followed him through the door and back into the never-ending maze of rubbish and waste and junk. The man broke off into a run, leaping gracefully over the debris with Chell in his lead. She didn't want to admit that jumping such a great distance reminded her strongly of Aperture, but she didn't mind as much now she had only been back for three days. The memories of GLaDOS and how she and Wheatley had tried to kill each other so many times while testing were still fresh in her mind, and after spending a whole month back there the past few mornings she had woken up and expected to find herself back in the Relaxation Chamber.

Following him around twist and turns and dodging under fallen ceilings and broken buildings, they jumped over rubble and generally tried to stay out of the sight from any Combine soldiers, drop-ships and gunships. Chell had absolutely no idea where they were going, but she followed him anyway because he probably had a better idea and knowledge of City 17 than she did. The only places she knew were the street she lived on and the country road back to Aperture, but other than that had never decided to venture the City further. Eventually, the man slowed to a stop.

Pulling her by the wrist down through what looked like an underground tunnel system of some sort, he only turned to face her when they were completely submerged underground. He turned to look at her, dropping her wrist and speaking for the first time. "Follow that tunnel down there," he spoke, his voice deep and husky as he raised his hand and gestured down the tunnel chute, "and it will take you to safety."

Chell was now confused. Like, _really _confused. "Why me? There are hundreds of people back there, and you choose to show me the top-secret tunnel that is possible the only place that leads to safety?"

He looked at her earnestly, obviously trying to keep in his patience. "Because you're the only civilian I've met so far who hasn't run off screaming, because that always gets them captured. Half the city is in those ships, being taken somewhere I don't know. I need to stay behind to help the remaining people, but you're the only one I've found so far that I can help. More people will be coming soon. Now _go, _or there's no chance for you."

Not wanting to disobey him, Chell glared at him as she went and past before gathering speed and tearing off at a run, the sound of an explosion overhead rattling the tunnel and causing soil and dirt to fall from the ceiling. She shielded her eyes, blinking a few times to get the dust out. As she started ascending further and further underground, the tiny sliver of light behind her began to lessen and lessen until it was almost pitch-black. The tunnel suddenly felt tighter and Chell began to find it hard to breathe.

Without being able to see, she had to permanently keep a hand on the wall just to reassure her that it was still there, and that she wasn't in fact dead. The air was damp and musty and every breath was thick. The tunnel was mainly straight, but it was so dark Chell wouldn't know if she was running the same direction all the way through or if she was subconsciously turning. The darkness left her alone to her thoughts, and the thought back to the mystery man who had helped her get this far. She wondered if she would have survived as long if she hadn't had the luck to run into him.

But she ran, and it always felt like someone were squeezing the life out of her, the walls caving in and slowly crushing her in an empty grave, where no-one would no where she died. She was always half-expecting the ceiling to fall, but she had to tell herself that if the man had helped her he would make sure that the tunnel was safe beforehand. She would just have to make sure she made no sudden movements or noises.

After walking for a while to regain her breath, she picked up her run again and let her feet pound heavily against the earthen ground, the water from the ceiling dripping onto her hair and her face dirty from when she had wiped it with her hand. She couldn't wait to get onto the other side of this rancid hell-hole. It was almost like being back in Aperture; thousands of kilograms of weight above your head and the breath of clean, fresh air and the warmth of sunlight upon your face unknown mysteries no-one could experience down there. Chell longed for a deep inhale of fresh air, because at least Aperture's air was better than down here.

She was beginning to lose hope of ever finding the end, so she sat down on the earthen soil and leaned against the walls, hanging her head back. Chell had thought that she was going through torture down in Aperture, but she hadn't known that worse, far, far worse was happening on the surface.

Groaning, she wiped her hands on her face again, half-tempted to bang her head against her knees in irritation. Annoyance spread through Chell like a wildfire. This was only another event in a whole series of misfortune that was basically her life. Nothing good _ever _happened to her, and for the most part her definition of 'good' was when nothing bad was happening.

She groaned again, realising the uselessness of her life. Did she have a purpose? Was she just the meaningless person sat in the background, waiting for her nonexistent destiny to meet her? She certainly didn't want to be. Chell wanted to be helpful, of use to at least somebody.

Jerked out of her thoughts when there was a loud rumble and bit's of earth crumbled from the sides of the tunnel, rolling down and shaking on the ground, Chell scrambled to her feet, looked left and right uncertainly, before sprinting off adrenaline down the direction she was pretty sure she was following. Her hair whipped against her face from the speed and caught in front of her eyes. Usually she would have pushed it away, but it was so dark it wouldn't make a difference to her sight.

The rumbling stopped after a bit, but Chell continued running after her mini rest. A feeling bubbled inside her stomach that the tunnel was nearly coming to an end and she would be back on the surface of the outside world soon, which urged her to continue her fast pace. She was now fitter than she was before from all the excess testing while recovering in Aperture, and she could now run for further distances. It still hurt though, and by the time a tiny sliver of light appeared in the distance Chell's breath came out in short, ragged gasps and her face was pink and blotchy. She wouldn't know that though, partly because she couldn't see her own face, and partly because it was too dark to see it even if she could.

Half of her was tempted to turn around and run the other way, as the tunnel began to slant upwards and Chell was tired enough as it. She wasn't quite sure about going towards the light, because, well, she was afraid that she was going to _die, _what with all that 'if you see light at the end of the tunnel, don't go towards it! You'll _die_!' nonsense. But although she wasn't one of the brightest humans out there, she was practical and knew well enough that she probably wasn't dying. She had always thought of the death tunnel as unrealistic and distant, being more of a single white light in a shadowy room of nothingness, rather than an all-too-real tunnel with real dirt and real earth, and the musty, rank smell was enough to tell her that she was fully conscious.

So, slowing down to a walk now she was in no particular hurry, she began the trek upwards towards the light at her own leisurely pace. All the while, the light at the end of the tunnel was growing brighter and bigger until Chell could even make out shapes in the distance. Fresh air blew in like a breeze, caressing her cheeks in a peaceful manner so unlike the air back at City 17. It was so good to feel light on her face, and as she was nearing the end the light hit her face and caused to her blink a few times after her eyes had become accustomed to the dark for so long.

The light was fully visible now, and Chell could hear the sweet singing of birds as she stepped out of the dank tunnel and into the open. She sighed peacefully and shut her eyes, remembering the fear she had experienced in City 17, despite how hard she had tried to cover it up through determination. She would almost have collapsed to the ground thanking God for her good luck of meeting that kind man, when the realisation that she could feel wheat under her fingers hit her and her eyes snapped open. She was in the wheat field, the all-too-familiar wheat field that she had only seen three times before. The time she was freed, the time she came back, and the time she was freed after coming back, fully healed. And now she could add a fourth.

Chell pondered on her options for a moment, trying to find the right path to take. If she headed back through the tunnel, now unnoticeable too anyone who didn't know it was there thanks to the wheat, there was almost guaranteed certain death, but if she stayed in the wheat field, there would be no chance of survival unless she found food.

Heaving a sigh, she turned away from the tunnel leading to death behind her and trekked back to the only place she could go. The place she had only left feeling rejuvenated three days ago.

{O}

GLaDOS stared at the screen bleakly as she watched the events unfold before her optic. It was almost unbearable to watch; everywhere ATLAS and P-Body went, something horrible, torturous, _excruciating _was happening, and it was too much for even GLaDOS. Her 'feelings' were getting to her, and she wanted so badly to switch the screen off and forget what she had just seen.

It was almost like having Morality attached to her again, it was so much. To see all the pain and torture on the screen before her, with the horrible knowledge that everything she was witnessing was actually happening at the very second she watched it, miles and miles away, up on the surface. It sent chills fluttering through her circuits, and it was enough to fry her wiring.

Just, the amount of pain see could visibly see, etched onto the faces of the people being hopelessly tortured by the ruthless Combine. When ATLAS and P-Body began following the Combine, GLaDOS had to look away as they dragged the people into a locked room and the only sounds were the hair-raising cries of agony. ATLAS and P-Body were stood frozen, optics, or 'eyes' wide in fear at the horrible sight that was happening before them.

GLaDOS had seen enough. When the screams had died down, she switched the screen off and turned away solemnly. Summoning ATLAS and P-Body back, GLaDOS was just glad that they had the ability to shoot a portal wherever they please and appear back in the Central AI Chamber. Had she not thought of that plan, it would have been very hard for them to come back and she didn't want to think of all the horrible experiments the Combine would perform, especially on them. And if the Combine discovered they were robots, they would stop at nothing to discover the manufacturers. GLaDOS knew she was taking a great risk by sending them out into the world, but GLaDOS had seen enough to know ATLAS and P-Body could take care of themselves and that with the technology of the Combine, they _would _discover Aperture. And that would mean the end.

Seconds later, ATLAS and P-Body stepped soberly into the chamber, sorrow and despair etched onto their mechanical faces. GLaDOS had no need for words, but watched as they laid down the portal gun gently on the floor and slumped with their backs against the wall. If GLaDOS had built them with the ability to cry, they would have been as they clutched each other's hands and stared gravely at the tiled floor. Unfortunately, having water placed beforehand in their bodies to only be activated when 'bad' emotions are registered, the risk of short-circuiting would be too great. Besides, what would be the point in giving androids, who shouldn't be able to experience emotions in the first place, the ability to cry? It was utterly pointless in GLaDOS's eye, but from what she had just seen she wished she could let it out. She wished those idiotic scientists had given her the ability to cry, because her Thought Processor was going crazy and the 'feelings' she was registering seemed to be spinning out of control. When asking Chell about feelings, for scientific purposes only, obviously, Chell had told her that crying was like letting all the emotions bottled up inside oneself out through your eyes, and GLaDOS wanted nothing more than the emotions of pity and pain to come pouring out of her, even if it was in the form of water.

But it wasn't only sadness. GLaDOS was also beginning to see why humans felt sick after seeing things disgusting, as even though she was a machine and wasn't as affected by it as humans would be, some of the things she had seen were completely gut-wrenching. All these emotions were very helpful for science, though, she thought, trying to take her mind off things. She also thought she was doing very well at keeping her emotions hidden. Yes, it was very hard for her bodily functions to show any sign of emotion anyway, but ATLAS and P-Body had known her long enough to tell what she was feeling, thinking and experiencing by the way she held her frame, and the brightness of her optic, and maybe even the tone of her voice if she was particularly emotional, but that rarely happened. Actually, it never happened, but if she was particularly depressed that would probably be the thing that would.

Sitting in silence as she turned and started tapping away at one of the keyboards with help from robotic arms, GLaDOS tried to ignore the low sighs behind her as she concentrated on a nonexistent project. She figured she should say something, as she didn't want to make them think she was upset about what she had just seen, but for the second time in her life she couldn't think of anything to say, let alone put into words. Becoming speechless seemed to be happening more and more often it seemed. But with the thoughts and flashbacks of the horrible things she had witness stopped her from thinking about anything else and every time she thought of something that might have been okay, she would simply forget it as the gut-wrenching screams rang through her Thought Processor.

Besides, things were sloping downhill now Chell had left. GLaDOS only had the non-organic beings of ATLAS, P-Body and Wheatley to keep her company, and GLaDOS once again found herself thinking of her ex-test subject. She would be up there, now, in that terrible world, and GLaDOS had to shut her optic when the thought that Chell was most likely being tortured by the Combine at that very second flashed through her mind.

GLaDOS's main frame shuddered at the thought, and for the first time she recalled ever experiencing it, GLaDOS felt regret. She regretted ever sending Chell back, and now her 'feelings' were growing stronger, it wasn't to test her. If Chell had stayed, she would be safe. It would be like when she was recovering; she and GLaDOS would have a mutual bond, and Chell would have the freedom to do what she wanted when she wanted. She would be able to live forever down here. Then again, with Wheatley hanging about, it might not be as safe as GLaDOS thought it would be. Still, it would be _safer._

And now Chell was probably dead, her innards spewed out across the floor of the Combine's Torture Chamber, her blood smothered against the floor and her throat ripped out. GLaDOS didn't want to think about it. She didn't want to think of all the awful things they would do to Chell's fragile, mangled body. "You two," she snapped, turning her gaze on them and hiding the anguish in her voice. "I think you've had enough rest. Surely the things you saw can't be _that _bad, _can they_?" she asked, watching them shudder in fear even though she didn't enjoy it nearly as much as she used to. She understood perfectly why they were upset, yet didn't want them to know she felt the same way. Possibly worse.

"Stop your moping. You're both acting like humans. Now, pick up your guns and head to the Cooperative Testing Initiative. We've got some testing to do."

With a huff, ATLAS and P-Body picked themselves up, their faces a display of sadness and grief. GLaDOS would be spending the rest of eternity testing, so she might as well start now. For science. Just when ATLAS and P-Body were stepping through the automatic door, there was a loud _crash _soon followed by an 'Oof!', before Wheatley stumbled in, his hair even messier than usual and his blue eyes bright and vibrant. Every time he moved, his robotic joints made a faint zipping sound and his jaw kept twitching nervously. GLaDOS sighed as he passed ATLAS and P-Body, while making an effort to look as intimidating as possible. He chuckled nervously. "Uh, h-hi, GLaDOS!" he said, leaning backwards slightly from her gaze as he shuffled awkwardly along the tiled floor, her silent optic following him carefully. "I, uh, heard some screaming, so I thought I'd just come check everything was, uh... o-okay..." he trailed off when GLaDOS's gaze narrowed and he could clearly see that everything was, in fact, okay. "Right, everything's okay, no screaming," he said, almost to himself. "Sorry, shouldn't have bothered you, I'm just going to, ah, go now," he grinned timidly, jerking his thumb behind his head and trying to avert his gaze from her. "Should never have come. Sorry, sorry,"

Meanwhile GLaDOS was mentally slapping herself for not turning off the sound, as she hadn't thought of the fact that every scream and wail from P-Body's clip would be heard all over the facility.

Wheatley chuckled again, looking somewhat sheepish as he scuttled backwards, tripping over his own two feet. Before he reached the door, however, he paused and turned back to her, still looking a bit apprehensive. "I kinda forgot, as well, um, my jaw is a bit... well, broken," he said, pointing to his jaw, which twitched again as if on cue. "Hasn't been working great recently, twitching a bit here and there, yeah, not been as good recently."

GLaDOS sighed and looked at him. "It proves that you're even more moronic than I initially thought you were by the fact you didn't even think of going to the Repair Chamber."

"I, uh, tried that already. Didn't seem to do anything," he grinned fretfully again, ignoring the moron joke. Then he yelped when an electrical spark jumped out of his jaw, crackling and sparkling in the air. "Is that supposed to happen? You know what, I don't think that's supposed to happen. It's even getting hard to taklgerabfbashgfasgfjafh..." his eyes widened and his hands flew to his mouth. "I qaiweuryabxvmzbdfjg spea-asrfhjadsgfhj!"

"Your jaw appears to be malfunctioning. It seems that you can't talk," she said dryly, but Wheatley didn't seem to listening. He was rolling his artificial tongue round his mouth and trying to speak, but every time he made a sound another spark fizzed out of his jaw and it would twitch again. "Bla-ah-ah-aha?" he asked, but his sounds were now completely unintelligible.

"You know, it's almost better like this. Your incomprehensible gibberish is tons better than your incessant rambling. Maybe I should just not repair you."

Wheatley's eyes widened and he started shaking his head frantically, protesting even though it made no sense. "Ca-blah blah-blah blah-bloo blah-blah-blah blah!" he spouted, his words jumbling together. He narrowed his eyes and seemed unhappy with his condition. "Blah-blah blah," he complained, and if he could talk his words would probably have sounded something like, 'I don't like not being able to talk.'

"You know what, I've changed my mind. Your rambling is much better than this. In fact, I may take away the ability to speak altogether. That would be a nice break."

"Blah-blah blah-blah blah-blah blah-blah blah-blah-blah-blah!" he protested, obviously disliking the idea.

"Oh well. I can dream. Now head over to the Repair Chamber _now, _or I will make sure you will never be able to speak again."

Wheatley sighed and nodded glumly, deciding on keeping his mouth closed. Even though it was his Voice Modulator that generated the sound, it needed to work cooperatively with the jaw to make the sounds into words, unlike his simple sphere body, and if the jaw stopped working properly he would be able to make sound but unable to make them into words. This was partially the reason it took him so long to get the hang of talking at the start.

He started trudging miserably back towards the door, feeling GLaDOS's gaze bore into his back, before he was interrupted when the room was shadowed in a flashing red light and a loud siren wailed into the chamber. Startled and worried, Wheatley yelped, "Bleuhh!" and scrambled backwards towards GLaDOS, but she was already staring intently at one of the screens. On all of them, in big flashing red letters, were the words, **INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT! **

GLaDOS turned and watched as Wheatley scrambled around, panic and alarm written across his face as he stumbled about. As she expected, drowned out by the wailing of the alarm, was the sound of loud, repetitive knocking from above the chamber.

Switching the screen to the camera feed outside and ignoring Wheatley, GLaDOS felt relief surge through her at the sight of Chell knocking on the door, looking bored and annoyed and in far better condition than the last time she was knocking on that door. Part of GLaDOS wondered how she had survived the Combine, but she had no time to think about it before she had opened the door for Chell and the bottom of the lift appeared in the ceiling.

Wheatley stopped and the alarms died down, as he stared, puzzled, at the descending lift. While GLaDOS sat waiting, only a few words left her Voice Modulator;

"Not again."

{O}

When Chell came back the second time, it had come as a bit of a shock to Wheatley. He hadn't been expecting it, and to top things off his whole world had gone utterly dark seconds after the bottom of the lift had appeared in the ceiling of the room. The rest of his memory was blurry after that, but he could remember one thing.

He could remember feeling pain. Only a little bit. Just a faint little sting, a physical pain. But looking back on it now, Wheatley couldn't believe how stupid it was. How stupid _he _was to not notice what the pain was until GLaDOS had looked him in his eye and told him, when he had woken up.

Yes, _eye. _Not _eyes. _

Because GLaDOS had put him back in his sphere body, and the tiny pain he had felt was actually his mind registering the pain of the Core Transfer Receptacle. Still, it was very minor compared to what he would have felt had he been conscious, and he was glad he wasn't. In fact, it made him wonder why GLaDOS made all Cores unconscious before putting them through that thing, because it definitely took a whole deal of pain away.

So it turns out that upon the arrival of Chell, GLaDOS had sent him into Offline Mode so it wouldn't generate havoc, and shoved him back in his Core body, so he could only inflict the minimum damage on Chell and the facility. Which was, in fact, no damage.

But he can't say he wasn't relieved. It felt great to be back in his usual sphere, and the first thing he had said was, "Well this is bloody brilliant!" And it was. He had spent his entire life in that sphere, and no matter how great the functions of the android body were, they couldn't beat the simplicity of the sphere which was far more suited to his artificial mind. He could concentrate on other things so much more now he didn't have to worry about walking and moving his fingers and everything of the sorts. It was a mystery that humans managed to live with it their whole lives, even though they're born with lesser brains than robots!

Then GLaDOS thrusted him back onto his Management Rail and he was forced to wander the empty facility alone for the next few days. Even though it was nice to be back to the ways he was used to from his entire life, the abilities he had were limited and the most her could do was slowly drift throughout Aperture sighing to himself miserably. He wasn't allowed to see Chell, like he'd want to, and GLaDOS stayed awfully quiet throughout the whole thing. Never even told him why Chell had come or what had happened. She had only appeared on a screen when he awoke on his Management Rail and told him that Chell had returned and that because of it he would have to go into his core body. He didn't mind, but that was all the details he had got and he desperately wished he had more, just to make things more refined.

Instead it made him confused and curious, and every second of every day the only thing in his Thought Processor was why she had come back and how. He couldn't concentrate on anything else and his not knowing almost drove him to the point of insane. He would make up mad theories in his head that made perfect sense to him at first, and then minutes later when he had come up with another one he would realise how far-fetched and unrealistic they actually are. One of his theories was that birds had somehow mutated and were eating people alive so she had retreated back to Aperture for safety. This was one of his more... crazy ideas, and it was even unbelievable when he had first come up with it.

Still, it was one of his favourites. He would keep replaying a scenario of Chell being violently murdered by a giant, man-eating bird over and over in his Thought Processor. Eventually though, the thought of man-eating began to terrify him slightly so he stopped thinking about that so much.

But now he was sat above an empty rail walkway, no light to be seen in the dark, shadowy atmosphere, finally tired of doing nothing but drifting around the Management rail and thinking. It seemed his Thought Processor had given all it had to give and now he could no longer imagine any crazy reasons as to why Chell had come back to fill in the empty void in his mind that marked the lack of his knowledge. He still hadn't come to a final answer of what had happened, and couldn't possibly reach one now, so he was driven even nuttier by the fact he didn't know.

The clanks and bangs of all the metal machinery around him were the only sounds in the air and, as he had been for the past five days, he felt completely alone. It almost felt like he was the only living thing here and that he always would be. He was beginning to understand what GLaDOS had felt, because the prospect of being the only thing here for the rest of eternity was awfully terrifying, even more so than an eternity in space. At least he had Space core then. Now, he still did have ATLAS and P-Body and GLaDOS, probably not Chell as GLaDOS wouldn't let him near her in the period that Chell was staying for whatever reason she was, but he felt so alone it was almost as if he'd never experience another person's company for the rest of his life. And that idea was probably even more terrifying than man-eating birds. To not see another person... _ever..._ that would probably be the scariest thought Wheatley would ever have the misfortune to experience.

That night Wheatley wearily wafted back to the Repair Chamber, his upper lid drooping slightly as he stared forlornly at the floor. He visibly drooped; rather than him carrying himself with an upbeat, let's-keep-going-even-though-a-creepy-robot-lady-wants-to-kill-us sort of attitude, he looked as sad and miserable as a spherical robot could. Entering the Repair Chamber for Wheatley was much like watching the dirt being poured over one's gravestone. About as welcoming as a bunch of flies buzzing around your own birthday cake.

Glancing once wistfully at the space of floor that used to be his bed, he watched as the panels of the ceiling slid open unwelcomingly and the shadowy darkness beckoned him in. There was a whirring as Wheatley slowly ascended upwards into the sinister hole in the ceiling. As the tiles below him folded back up, Wheatley was enveloped in complete darkness.

The only light he could see now was the faint blue glow from his optic reflecting back off the smooth, cool surface of the metallic box he was currently sat in. To be honest, it was a lot more comfortable here than it was to sleep when he was an android; when you're a sphere, there aren't many feelings you can get when it comes to comfort. There was only one position, and it wasn't on that allowed you to feel uncomfortable, so much unlike the android body. Wheatley had found it hard to get in a comfortable position in the first few nights in there.

Eventually, shutting his optic to block out the glow, Wheatley slipped into offline mode for the night, trying to comfort himself with the thought that Chell would be gone soon and then things would go back to normal. Hopefully.

Unfortunately, the next morning, things didn't go quite the way Wheatley was hoping them to. Almost the second after he had woken up, the tiles beneath him had slid open and the artificial light from the Repair Chamber streamed in, temporarily blinding his vision. He blinked his optic a few times, his Optical Modulator getting adjusted to the sudden change in lighting. Sighing, he lowered himself out of his little crook in the ceiling and clicked back into place on the Management Rail. He was about to leave via the round, blue, automatic Aperture door like he did every morning, when the screen in the corner of the room flickered into life and GLaDOS emotionless 'face' appeared in view. Her yellow, glistening optic was narrowed slightly in irritation as she looked him down with obvious distaste, even for a computer.

"Good morning. Or afternoon. Or whatever time it is on the surface. I've decided we need to talk things over, so I'm inviting- well, more like _forcing _you to come to Central AI Chamber. We've got some things to sort out." Then a little blip announced her departure and the screen switched off, leaving Wheatley momentarily baffled and slightly shocked at the first speech he had heard in almost a week.

Gathering himself back to his senses, he decided it probably wouldn't be a bright idea to arrive late, not when it's GLaDOS, so he whirred along the rail and through the doors as fast as it would allow him, not pausing for though once along the ride above the rails. By the time he got there eventually, his database alerted him that only thirty seconds had passed in the time it took to get here. With a slight, "Phew!" of relief, and he came into the chamber along the elongating Management Rail, rambling on to himself about all the random thoughts that were flying through his head at that moment and how great it felt to have someone to talk to again, even if he did most, no, _all, _of the talking and whoever happened to be listening probably wasn't registering it anyway.

When he saw that not only an optic but a pair of eyes were trained on him, his wordy monologue trailed off slightly as he paused, glancing nervously round the room and shifting awkwardly in his body. The murderous look in Chell's eyes told him he was not welcome here, and the fact that he was back in his core body made all the horrible memories alive and fresh in Chell's mind.

There was an awkward silence after that, not even broken by any comments he had, as his gaze flickered between GLaDOS and Chell and back to GLaDOS again. When he did speak, it was only to break the horrible stillness that had settled in the room. "Uh, hi! It's been a while since I last saw you, hasn't it? Yeah, very long time. I-uh..." he trailed off when they both turned to look at him, their gazes equally scary. "Yeah..." he finished uneasily, looking down at the floor and not meeting their gaze.

"Oh. Well this is nice. At least this reunion isn't as _violent_ as the last," GLaDOS started, catching their attention yet still leaving them time to glare at each other with a burning hatred. "I figured we need to get things sorted, as our little... _situation _isn't going to get us anywhere. I thought about trying to make you friends, but I didn't want to risk blowing the place up, so I've come to a conclusion. Unfortunately, the Combine attacks are growing more serious and don't seem to be lessening. For Chell to go back up there would mean certain death. I personally don't want her to stay down here, let alone alive, and nor do you," she glanced at Wheatley, who didn't notice, "but it wouldn't be good if my favourite test subject was murdered and tortured by men with guns."

Chell visibly shuddered. "So unfortunately, for all of us, I have no choice but to keep her down here until it's safe to go up. You two will test if needs be, and will generally try to stay out of each other's way. That way at least one of us will be safe."

When they just looked at each other, GLaDOS said, "I mean me. Now, you should both head back to your rooms while I think the rest of it through. Don't kill each other."

Her words were dismissive, and even Wheatley could tell. Slowly exiting the room, but not without a final glare at Chell, Wheatley headed back to the Repair Chamber to ponder on his situation. Part of him wondered why GLaDOS had chosen to keep Chell safe when she obviously didn't have to, but most of him wondered how he was supposed to be able to restrain from killing her when back in the android body.

Sighing as he re-entered the Repair Chamber to wait, Wheatley thought and thought and thought.

Chell was back. They weren't allowed to even try to kill each other. She might be staying for a very long time.

_God help us, _Wheatley thought.

**A/N. Phew! Sorry that took so long! I think the ending was a bit rushed. Anyway, it's late and I'm tired and please forgive any mistakes and all. If there's anything you want to happen or something, please tell me in a review. Please review anyway though! It would mean a lot to me. Anyway, we've been really busy since it's the holidays and I've been really tired, and it snowed so the internet was broken for a lot of the day, so please ignore the time of this one. Hopefully the next one will be in soon. By the way, something really emotional and exciting is gonna happen in either chapter 7 or 8, because I want to try and be able to jerk tears. I'll probably fail, but hey, at least I tried! :) So, yeah, keep a lookout for 7 or 8 or both.  
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**Disclaimer: All copyrights belong to VALVe, not me.  
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**Thank you! **

**~Franki**


	6. Chapter 6

Since testing was out of the question, Chell started going on runs. Yes, granted, with the situation _upstairs_, GLaDOS wouldn't even think about letting her up on the surface, but Chell would not continue testing if she had to do it with that _moron. _So she ran. There wasn't much to do involving exercise down here, because having a gym was probably not on the scientist's top priorities, so the only thing that could keep Chell fit was performing tests.

But no, GLaDOS had firmly stated that if either one of them had to test, they would do it with the other, or not at all, despite the other's wishes. Now powerless in the sphere body, Wheatley had caught on that Chell did _not _in fact want to test, and would have been frankly too scared about her reaction if she was forced to just because of his wishes.

So Chell had decided to start going on runs. Not long marathons or anything of the kind, but just one or two quick runs a day to keep her on the healthy side. After being released from Aperture the first time, (the one where GLaDOS willingly let her go) Chell's fitness had decreased greatly since she had stopped testing, and it had almost cost her greatly when she had wanted to return. Being unfit. Chell could not say she enjoyed the feeling. And so the runs helped her keep on top of it, because being unfit was not something Chell would like to experience again.

Then running helped clear out her mind. Despite having no responsibilities down there in Aperture and Chell was literally free to do whatever she pleased, Chell was often troubled by thoughts and worries about nothing in particular scrabbling for dear life at the corners of her mind. It was even worse that she didn't know what they were or what she was worrying for, because that way she couldn't think of a logical solution to sort them out. Instead she spent her time worrying about nothing with no way to solve it and trying to work out what on earth it was that she was worrying about.

So runs helped her think. When she wasn't worrying while staring at the ceiling of the Relaxation Chamber in bed, she was worrying while she ran because it was the only other time she was alone to her thoughts with no-one else to bother her. Then she began to gather speed every day, until she could run for far greater distance, be in less pain while doing it, and recover quicker by the end of it. She was pleased with her progress, and happy now that the faster she could run the more she grew used to the metal walkways of Aperture with all the twists and turns. Chell began to grow addicted to the sound of the metal clanging and clanking beneath her feet with every heavy footstep. The more she could hear the wind from her momentum whistling past her ears the more she could think, and she was even able to tell where every corner and turn was, so it came naturally to her. She could concentrate fully on not concentrating on Wheatley-hating thoughts now she didn't need to keep thinking about where she was headed so she wasn't banging into walls all the time. Besides, if she didn't concentrate on where she was headed, she would probably fall off the edge after running over the safety rail.

But, every once in a while, she would run into Wheatley on his Management Rail. She would do her best to ignore him, but he would be blown back slightly as she thundered past, and most days when this happened he would confusedly call back after her retreating figure, "You're running very fast, aren't you? Yeah, very fast. Maybe watch where you're going next time, love?" but it would only be a distant jumble of sounds that sounded remotely like a human voice on the other side of a glass wall, as she was never there long enough to hear exactly what he was saying. She didn't really want to, anyway.

They were no longer trying to kill each other, yes, and although Chell could tell Wheatley wasn't particularly fond of their predicament, he was finding it hard to ask for forgiveness and she wasn't going to forgive him if he did. She could try, and pretend that she does, but Chell knew for certain that it was rather hard to forgive someone after they tried to kill you.

She would have tried to persuade herself that it was only the corruption of the mainframe that had... well, corrupted him, but to be honest, part of her didn't want to. Every time the thought sneaked it's way into her almost unbreakable mind, she would quickly shut it out, perfectly happy to continue hating him for trying to kill her, on purpose, completely of his own accord.

But Chell hadn't realised that GLaDOS had been taking track of her running. Every time she left, thinking that she was alone to do what she pleases, she hadn't realised that GLaDOS had sent a camera to follow her and was monitoring her fitness progress and her heart rate. Of course, it was a lot more scientific and complicated than that, but when GLaDOS had actually informed Chell on what she was doing, her exact words had been; "I've been watching you; yes, watching you. While you were running. I had performed very complex observations on you, but I will make it less complicated for your small, moronic brain to handle."

And then when Chell had inquired on why, GLaDOS had not given her a proper answer. She had merely stated; "I have my reasons. Why should they be of interest to you?" leaving Chell confused and befuddled. She knew from experience that GLaDOS would not just test her on a whim, and that if she had reasons they would be completely and entirely justified and reasonable. It was the reasons that Chell was curious about.

But GLaDOS had still not told her, and Chell forgot about it almost entirely after a while. She lost track of how long she had been down here, but estimated it would be around two months, and whenever she asked GLaDOS about the state of the attacks _upstairs _and whether it was okay for her to go back, GLaDOS had responded every time with the fact that Chell would be staying down here a little longer. She began to wonder if the remains of the human race or something catastrophic and apocalyptic had happened and she would never be able to return, but soon shrugged the though away. It was too dire to think about.

Yet Chell only saw Wheatley around five times in the duration she was there, when she 'ran into him' on her runs.Otherwise, the only company she ever received during the 'time' she had spent here, whatever amount that may be, were the brief, neutral talks with GLaDOS. They never talked for the mere sake of talking though; every time Chell was summoned to have a little 'chat' with GLaDOS, it was to discuss the current status of the outside and for Chell to relay on all the information she had gathered on the Combine and their ruthless ways. Every single, last little detail. It was definitely a challenge for Chell to rack her brains on all the facts and figures she had ever recalled, as despite the great intellect she has that's required to complete the trickier of tests, Chell was more or less more of a physical person than a mental. Yes, she was clever, but after spending 'nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine... unknown amounts of time' in statis, her 'brain damage' rendered her mind not as well developed as her body.

But she knew how incredibly important it was that she try to remember as many details as possible; without them, GLaDOS wouldn't have the necessities that she required in order to put together a successful... actually, Chell didn't know why GLaDOS needed them. All she knew was that they were important, and that something big relied on Chell to memorize everything. That was a lot of pressure, as before Chell was pressurised into keeping herself alive, but now it was her responsibility to do something important, what it was she didn't know, but she knew that a lot of lives would probably be saved if she did do it.

That was why she loved her daily runs so much. They distracted her from all the things she didn't want to think about; the horrible, unknown worry she still didn't quite understand, and the excruciating dependency on her and her unpromising memory. GLaDOS had made it quite clear that a simple human's memory was about literally 2% the worth of that of an AI, albeit she exaggerated most of the time. Fine, _all _the time. But it made Chell realize just how small and scrawny the human race were compared to the powerful, invulnerable robots and computers, lost to mankind in the basements of Aperture.

And then that thought led to another, crazy idea that struck Chell like a dagger slash across the face, and it was so damn _obvious _it made her wonder why she hadn't thought of it before. The nagging doubt and ceaseless worrying at the back of her mind had been for the state of the surface, and she had constantly been subconsciously fretting about mankind, her own species. And all this while she had thought it had something to do with Wheatley and their 'predicament', but all along it had been for her fellow humans, being tortured up on the surface by the Combine. Then while on her run, the idea that had been staring at her in the face all along finally became visible and Chell nearly stumbled from the shock. She skidded to a halt, trying to process the fantastic, _brilliant _idea that she had just brewed up, before racing all the way to the AI Chamber so fast she couldn't stand once she had reached it.

She slumped down against the wall next to the door, hugging her knees to her chest while she regained her breath. Chell was just about to stand up, brushing down her trousers to make herself presentable for GLaDOS, when her ears picked up the fine, faint whirring of mechanics growing all the more close from somewhere to her right. She whipped her head round, too focused on her fantastic idea to have mercy on whatever it was that was interrupting her, and soon tensed when she saw who it was. Or _what _it was in her eyes. She refused to see him as a person. He was artificial, emotionless, incapable of feeling any guilt or any positive emotion towards her. That's why she refused to forgive him. She refused to forgive him when he wouldn't feel sorry. At least that's what she told herself. Any doubts were ignored and shoved to the back of her mind, where she locked the door and tossed away the key.

Wheatley slowly came into view, hanging by the Management Rail, his blue optic lowered glumly to the floor. The usual bright, cerulean colour was dull and unfocused, like the sea on a particularly bleak day. His whole spherical frame drooped and even the usually shiny white panelling was grey and dreary. Though it wasn't like she felt sorry for him or anything. He was nothing more than a robot in her eyes, and if he was depressed, or as depressed as he was capable of feeling, then good for him. Good for him was all she was going to say to that.

But she stood up abruptly anyway, causing the metal walkway to swing slightly and bang against the wall, jerking Wheatley out of his misery with a loud yelp followed by a frantic, panicky, "What was that? What was that? What wa- oh. It's only you."

Without thinking, Chell strode towards him with her fists clenched in defiance, feeling his gaze watching her with an unwanted curiosity. Then before he could say anything and protest, she had grabbed his bar and was yanking him from the rail; she knew he wouldn't die, and if GLaDOS agreed to go through with Chell's plan, Wheatley would need to be there too, no matter how much Chell hated him.

He was protesting loudly as her legs lifted off the metal flooring trying to pull him from the Management Rail, the walkway beneath them groaning now her weight had been lifted. "What are you doing? No, no, no, no, no! I wouldn't do that luv, if you just let go- ARRGGHH! Oh god, that hurt! What do you think you're bloody doing? It's hurting, it's hurting, it's hurting, owww, god, that _cannot_ be good for me. You know, GLaDOS wasn't lying when she said you were heav- ARRGGHHH!"

Wheatley had been flung off the Management Rail with such a force it knocked them both back, sending Chell tumbling back to the ground of the metal walkway, Wheatley clutched in her arms. When realizing with disgust that she was probably doing him a favour, she tossed him to the side before impact, trying to make it as painful an experience for him as possible.

He groaned loudly, but she wasn't one to care as she rubbed her own sore backside and straightened her back with a groan. "Ohhhhh, that hurts," he moaned, facing the floor. Chell stood and waited until he fully realized his situation. "Wait- wha- what? Oh, god, oh god, oh god! This is bad, this is very, very bad! GLaDOS is going to kill me, GLaDOS is going to kill me- wait. No, this is good news! She'll kill _you_! Ha ha!"

Chell just watched as he remained on the floor, folding her arms over her chest and listening impatiently to his delight at GLaDOS's plans on 'killing' her. When she figured he had had long enough, she bent down to gather him up in her arms.

"No, no, no, no, no, no! Hands off! Nope, you're_ not_ going to be carrying me _anywhere._"

Chell sighed and dropped him onto the floor again, relishing in the satisfying sound of his crash. "Fine then. I'll just leave you here on the floor for you to make your _own_ way."

Then she turned on her heel and made her way to the round, Aperture doors that opened automatically at her presence with a _zip. _Just before she stepped through the doors, Wheatley spoke again, not to her surprise. "Heh," he started eloquently. "You know, carrying me wouldn't be _such _a bad idea, if you know what I mean."

When she didn't move he sighed and reluctantly added a, "Please?"

Chell grumbled something incoherent under her breath and picked him up by the rail, not aiming to make it a comfortable ride. He was heavier now she didn't have the portal gun, and she leaned towards her left a little from his straining weight.

When entering the bright, sterile dome-shaped chamber of the Central AI, GLaDOS turned around to face them after sensing their presence.

"Oh. Hello," she said dryly. Her gaze averted to Wheatley, dangling at Chell's side uncomfortably. He squeaked under the glare from her patronising optic. "Oh look. You brought the moron with you."

Chell nodded slightly and dropped Wheatley to the ground, before striding across the white tiled floor and sitting cross-legged in front of GLaDOS, who looked at her expectantly.

She had a plan to tell.

{O}

GLaDOS could not say she particularly liked Chell's plan. To her, it was a nuisance, getting in the way of things that were far more important in her list of priorities. She had no wish to get involved with it, it was none of her business, and it certainly wasn't her problem. If _they _had a problem, then they should solve it themselves. GLaDOS felt like she was giving out her soul to these people, and that she deserved a nice long rest watching ATLAS and P-Body test afterwards as a reward to her generosity.

To be honest, she didn't know she agreed to go through with it in the first place. It wasn't even a very good plan; countless flaws, illogical, far-fetched and with an estimated 80% chance of complete failure, and maybe even certain death. She did tell Chell this of course, but the woman was persistent. Plus, she was desperate. Going forwards with her crazy idea might be the only thing that could save her species.

Wheatley didn't like it much either. He was spineless, both literally and metaphorically, and the plan involved him going through the immense pain of the Core Transfer Receptacle and actually doing something, and he wasn't all for it after GLaDOS and Chell told him he would have to go through a lot of pain, stress, pressure, and a bunch of other negative emotions cruel scientists thought would be a bright idea to give to robots. They were sadistic and inhumane, the whole lot of them.

But after some shouting and grumbling and banging and thrashing, and a whole lot of other bad things that shan't be written down, he reluctantly agreed, and GLaDOS was left alone to her thoughts. She kept running through Chell's words in her Thought Processor, thinking things through and trying to understand what Chell had been thinking. What had Chell been thinking?

GLaDOS sighed sadly, the gears and cogs in her artificial brain tired from thinking. She needed to rest. Lifting her gaze off of the floor, her optic was met with the emotionless stare of the Rocket Launcher, that was still conveniently sat there like it had a purpose. It's blank, blue glare seemed to be taunting her. She glowered at it.

"I don't know what you're looking at."

The Rocket Launcher did not respond. She knew it would only fire at her command, but the way it was poised, so alert, like it could shoot any second, unnerved her slightly.

"It's not like you would understand."

As she was expecting, the Rocket Launcher was unresponsive. "Maybe I should attach a Construct to you," she voiced her thoughts aloud, glad that no-one was here to see her resort to talking to machines, and worse, machines who could not hear, nor talk back. "I'm sure it would be great for science to see what personality a Rocket Launcher was able to come up with."

She sighed again. "Sometimes it seems like you're the only one who really understands me."

If Rocket Launcher was able of thinking for itself, it would have felt pity for her. It understood. It understood what it was like to be controlled. It was a slave to GLaDOS's will, as was she to the Itch. And now Chell no longer needed disposing of, Rocket Launcher had no purpose. GLaDOS wondered why it was still there, to be honest. It was as useless as she was. So purposeless she had been reduced to saving _humans,_ for heaven's sake, just to fill in time. A tiny voice that sounded similar to Morality squeaked in the back of her database, 'Isn't it to help Chell?' but she banished it away before it could finish it's sentence, mentally cursing her under-development conscience.

Conscience. Con-science. What it had to do with science, she did not know. How could one concentrate fully on science when a conscience was clouding their judgement?

She sighed again, and replayed Chell's plan.

_Unless we do something, the Combine will take over and my species will be wiped out. I'm not suggesting we bring them all down here, no, the Combine will find us, but think on this; if Black Mesa East had the help from all the technology down here, would they have stood a better chance against the Combine? I'm not suggesting we pair up, I know you guys still have your pride to think of, but if we do something, we might just be able to save mankind._

"_Just the three of us?" Wheatley had asked. "What exactly do you have in mind? Because the look you're giving me is not exactly comforting..."_

_Then GLaDOS had looked at Chell expectantly, expecting to hear a long, detailed plan-_

"_I don't know."_

"_Well. Isn't that a helpful plan? It's hard to get more detailed than that. Well done Chell. We can tell you spent a _long_ time thinking about that."_

"_Well, I do know some parts. I didn't really think it through, because I thought I would forget it if I didn't tell you straight away, but I know that it would be a good start if we went up, armed with rocket launchers, disencouragement beams, conversion gel, and any other stuff Aperture has stacked away down here, and we'd probably stand a pretty good chance."_

A pretty good chance.

GLaDOS wished it was that simple.

Because the truth was, unknown to Chell and Wheatley, GLaDOS had been studying the Combine's movements for a few weeks now. The human population had been growing smaller and smaller every day, and the Combine's forces had been spreading like wildfire. Unfortunately, their control on mankind was very secure and strict, and so they would notice when one went missing without them killing them first, which meant that they knew someone called Chell had mysteriously disappeared and they needed to know where.

Not only that, but GLaDOS bugged their Radio Transmission and picked up on a conversation that relayed important information, and it quite surprised her. Apparently, one of the Black Mesa East scientists was captured and tortured for information, and eventually spilled the beans that an underground facility called _Aperture _existed somewhere, and that if the Combine found it they would have supplies and ammo beyond their wildest fantasies. It was like a science-fictional Cave Of Wonders.

Even worse, the Black Mesa group had been tracking down the _Borealis _for weeks, and if they found it they would be able to trace it back to Aperture. Turns out they had the same idea as Chell, and thought it would be a miracle if they were to find Aperture and all the wonders it had hidden.

Unfortunately, the idiot of a scientist was so weak-willed he gave away that information too, and now the Combine was searching for the _Borealis _as well, just to put the cherry on the cake.

Oh, cake. GLaDOS would kill for a cake right now.

Well, she would kill anyway, but a cake was really what she needed.

Because the truth was, there was a pretty big chance the Combine would reach the Borealis first, what with all their high-technology and mass supply of weapons and control. GLaDOS would rather have Black Mesa morons get their fat fingers on her work than those malicious, blood-thirsty beasts of a species Combine forces. If they found the Borealis, which GLaDOS had a sneaking suspicion they already had done, it would only be a matter of time before they found Aperture and life as GLaDOS knew it would be flushed down the drain.

She needed something to get her mind off it.

Testing.

Testing always helped... usually.

Oh well. It was worth a try.

She flicked the camera feed to the internal test chamber cameras and watched with disgust as ATLAS and P-Body, now back in their original bodies, were playing something that looked suspiciously like 'A sailor went to sea-sea-sea.'

Then ATLAS accidently hit P-Body in the eye, and she fell back to the floor, jittering and twitching in a manner that could pass off as laughter. GLaDOS internally groaned at their incompetence. After a while, when they seemed to have gotten over the eye-poking incident, they began to test again, but slowly, and GLaDOS lost count of the amount of times they died due to lack of focus and just general stupidity.

When they still hadn't completed the test chamber three hours later, GLaDOS gave up and admitted the fact that it would be a while before they got anywhere near finishing, despite all her sarcastic, patronising comments and orders, so it was fruitless to try and continue watching when there would be no help to science if she did.

Her brain needed a rest. She had been working it too hard recently, and although she had no physical need to charge, her mental state was near-breakdown from all the stress, even though she acted calm and collected on the surface.

Stress was not something she enjoyed experiencing, and she wanted to lessen the risk of it happening again. Wheatley would be put in the android body the next day, and they were going to start preparing. There was no chance of them ever making up, and they were both in their separate rooms, sleeping. She could sleep peacefully, without worry.

So GLaDOS locked the doors and shut her optic, her frame going limp and the room going dark other than the faint glow of the Rocket Launcher.

{O}

Ever since the 'news', as Wheatley liked to call it, he had been a bundle of nerves. Well, more than he was normally. That night, while he was secure in his 'box' in the ceiling, he spent his time chatting into the darkness like it was an old friend, relaying all his worries, (which was a lot) and generally trying to get things off his metaphorical chest. Tomorrow, he would be going through something that would be the start of a long line of pain – yes, scientists were sadistic enough to give robots the ability to feel _pain_, even spherical ones.

He hated the Core Transfer Receptacle. Almost as much as he 'hated' Chell, or at least he told himself that. Wheatley had been through that thing four times, and none of them were particularly enjoyable. In fact, they were quite the opposite. The pain... _oh, the _pain_! _It haunted his waking moments and sent twitches – the robotic equivalent of shudders – through his body.

And then he wasn't looking forward to being back in the android body, either. It was so damn _confusing! _It had taken him a long time to get used to the last time, but _again? _Wheatley didn't know how he would manage it. Then there was Chell. Given hands and the ability to wring someone's neck with a 200kg grip only androids held, he didn't know how he would be able to resist. When back in the sphere, he acted more or less civil to her, and never mentioned the hatred he felt with a burning passion. In fact, he only spoke when absolutely necessary, although Wheatley's idea of 'only speaking when necessary' might be a little bit different to most people.

And then after the Core Transfer Receptacle, Chell continued to place herself further down on the 'How much Wheatley likes this person' scale in his database, although there were hardly any people on it anyway, by forcing him to go through a lot of pain and stress and effort just to save _her revolting_ species. It wasn't his problem, and he didn't see why he should care.

But no, she and GLaDOS had dragged him into it, and when in the android body he wouldn't be able to do _nearly _as much as he was able to do when in complete control of the facility, and would be rendered useless to the 'team.' They probably thought he was useless anyway, because after all, he was only a _moron. _He was designed to be a _moron. _He was born a moron, and he would die a moron. If he did die, that is. Yet if they went up to that hazardous place, if he went up, and they faced the Combine full on, the chances of that happening were beginning to grow a frightening amount. It was not something Wheatley was looking forward to.

Then, as far as his general lack of intelligence would allow him, Wheatley had developed a somewhat suspicion that there was more to it than that. GLaDOS would shut herself away, hunched uncomfortable over a screen, and whenever he, (or Chell, he figured) approached, she would violently snap at them to leave. He guessed that Chell would probably inquire further, but Wheatley being Wheatley, he just squeaked and hurried away, the retractable Management Rail following him as he left.

But GLaDOS was doing something, and if GLaDOS was doing something it meant she knew something that he didn't. Actually, she knew an awful lot of things he didn't, but he guessed that Chell didn't know either, and that it was something to do with their 'plan' on overthrowing the Combine. Of course, it was only a guess, and a moron's guess is not the most reliable source of information in the universe. Wheatley still wanted to know, though.

Oh well. Sleeping on it wouldn't help, as if he were able to go to sleep anyway. His Thought Processor was far too busy concentrating on more important matters, like his prominent torture and probable death, so he would continue worrying rather than trying to work out GLaDOS's motives. He would probably come up with a load of crazy ideas anyway, and GLaDOS's motives were often very complicated and complex. Wheatley knew it was utterly pointless to try and work it out, because he would never reach a satisfactory conclusion and the more he thought about it the more he became desperate to know about it. So he focused on his fretting and anxious thoughts, as if he could actually concentrate on anything else when he was to be forced to be put through the _Core Transfer Receptacle_ tomorrow.

Wheatley sighed to himself and closed his optic, physically unable to stay awake for much longer without charging. Even on the Management Rail, both the android and the sphere were incapable of staying awake without charging for more than a day. Then, with a final panicked thought, he brought himself to sliding into the plug and feeling himself shut down, unconscious until morning.

When he awoke, the first thought that raced through his mind was, 'God, oh god, oh god, oh god! Today's the day of the Core Transfer Receptacle, I'm going to die, I'm going to die, I'm going to die! Someone, kill me now please! I don't care _what_ you think, I'm going to die.'

But then the realization that no-one was going to kill him and he would have to do this dawned on him, and he slid out from the box in the ceiling to be momentarily blinded by the bright, artificial glares of the Repair Chamber. It would be past 10am due to his going to 'sleep' late the previous night, so the doors would be open and GLaDOS will have hopefully put the finishing touches on the plan. It also meant that the time was more than ready for him to be put on the Core Transfer Receptacle as soon as he left the safety of his room, quickly followed by the having to restrain from killing Chell when presented with the ability to do so.

He would probably stay there for a bit for some mental preparation.

Eventually, he gathered the will-power to move, and set off on the slow journey of the Management Rail. He stared down at the ground, muttering incoherently to himself and trying his best to ignore the long, distant drop beneath him. All he could see was darkness that seemed to stretch on forever, and he wouldn't like to be the one to find out how long it takes to reach the bottom.

Thoughts raced through his Thought Processor faster than he could make sense of them, all about how he could escape from the dreaded Core Transfer Receptacle that, whether he liked it or not, awaited him. _Is it going to hurt? Well, of course it's going to hurt, Wheatley, it's the bloody Core Transfer Receptacle! Oh, but I don't want it to hurt! Stupid, stupid humans. Stupid Chell. Why do I have to do this just for _them?_ When I _clearly _have more important things to do? If Chell wants her stupid, fat species to be saved, then she should do it herself. _

But his rants on hating Chell were only to mask up and take his mind off the thoughts that sounded more like; _I'm going to die, I'm going to die, I'm going to die, I'm going to die. Damn Core Transfer Receptacle... what kind of scientist would be sadistic enough to allow robots to feel pain? Or invent the Core Transfer Receptacle, for that matter! Ah! What's that? Okay, it's alright, it was nothing. Just have to think about something else, don't think about the Core Transfer Recepta- you see? It's impossible not to think about it! _

Wheatley didn't register how long he had been 'wandering' the facility like this, but he knew that no matter how much he put it off, he would be back in the android body by the end of the day. So, even Wheatley realized there wasn't much point holding it off for longer, and eventually decided he should get it over and done with.

Of course, this took about another hour of not moving in mental battle with himself, but when he realized he didn't have much time left and if he didn't get to the Central AI Chamber by the end of the day, GLaDOS would kill him, and that GLaDOS's methods would hurt a _lot _more than the Core Transfer Receptacle. In fact, the Core Transfer Receptacle was as painless as sleeping compared to the sick techniques GLaDOS had stacked away in the macabre programming of hers. So this thought sent Wheatley off with a tremble as fast as the Management Rail would allow him towards the Central AI Chamber.

He spoke to himself along the way, just quiet murmurings. Whatever happened to being going on through his Thought Processor. It was hard to keep focused, and so he lost his way many times. But eventually, as an unpleasant surprise, he managed to find his way. He paused in front of the doors, hanging on the Management Rail in complete suspense as he braced himself. Then, with a deep artificial breath, the doors whizzed open and beckoned him in dangerously with the all too bright, sterile white walls. His whole frame shook anxiously, and about half a meter in he backed away, saying, "I can't do that, I'm not doing that, I'm leaving now, don't expect me to go through that horrible thing. Much too painful, that."

But the doors had shut behind him, and had he been human, he would have gulped. GLaDOS had turned, her yellow optic glinting dangerously. She looked shaken, as did Chell stood beneath GLaDOS. Wheatley saw the fear that flashed momentarily across her intense, grey eyes, and part of him knew it wasn't anything to do with his part.

"You certainly won't be leaving any time soon. It seems we are in what a simple mind such as yours would call a hurry, so you'll be in that Core Transfer Receptacle sooner than you thought," GLaDOS drawled in her usual monotone voice.

"Wh-why? Has anything happened?" he stammered, worst-case scenarios already flashing through his Thought Processor.

There was a long, horrible pause as GLaDOS and Chell looked at him, Chell's face a mixture of negative emotions and GLaDOS's optic displaying what she was trying so hard to mask; worry.

"What is it? What's happened?" He was right. Nobody ever told him anything.

Then, with a final glance at Chell, GLaDOS said, "They've come."

**A/N. Okay, first things first, I'm very, very sorry for not getting this up sooner. I had to go to my grandmother's house for Easter and couldn't write it when there, and then it was the Easter Holidays as soon as we got back, so we were busy with family stuff and I had homework. Then as soon as we went back to school, I had to do even more homework and revising for some tests that are coming up. So I was so tired by the time I came back from school, I couldn't even think about writing more, so I let my brain rest and just read **_**Portal**_** fanfics instead of writing them. Eventually, after all the reading, I began to get sick of **_**Portal **_**and couldn't even think about it, let alone writing it, so when I had less work, I began writing other things. My mum also wanted me to write a short story we came up with together, so I've been writing that, other fanfictions and an original story since. I still have to do revision, and when updated this I shall probably still not update as regularly as I said I would have. Also, after submitting one of the different fanfics, people requested I do another one from that fandom, so I'll be doing that before working on the next chapter for this. Maybe when the tests have come and gone this will be updated quicker, but I'll be working on other stuff to get my mind off too much of the **_**Portal. **_

**Also, they are probably out of character in this, as they have been for the last ones, and my writing has been decreasing in quality since the end of the holidays because of tiring days at school. You don't have to carry on reading this, and I will not continue writing it if no-one wants me to, because I have other stuff to work on and there's not much point in me writing it when no-one wants to read it. So if you want me to carry on writing it, tell me in a review and I shall, as fast as my poor mind is capable of! (Although I can't guarantee anything!)**

**Anyway, reviews and feedback are well appreciated!**

**Disclaimer: All copyrights belong to ValvE, not me. **

**Thank you!**

**~Franki**


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